Waking up in another universe
by pastelchalks
Summary: Connor and Hank manage to wake up in a time - or rather a universe that isn't their own. They're back in the year 2015 and trying to manage their way back home. Father/Son Connor and Hank. (Taken off Archive of Our Own under the same name)
1. Chapter 1

The sudden blue light surprises Connor as much as anybody else in the room, he has no time to stay there surprised, and he assesses the situation immediately, after scanning the blue plasmic like floating entity, which was radiating a cold blinding light. He detects the temperature to decrease from a healthy 25 degrees Celsius down to a freezing negative 5 degrees.

Although he can work under these conditions, it is not optimal. The stillness of the alien light only lasts another second, when the stability rates of the light go haywire.

PROBABILITY OF SURVIVAL: ?  
OPTIMAL PRIORITY: PREVENT_HUMAN_CASUALTIES

Connor shoves the two other people in the room out the door, before attempting to follow himself. Despite his efforts, both he and the Lieutenant are caught in the blinding light when it blows, in a plasmic blast pattern.

DETECTED: POWER_RECEPTORS_OVERLOADED_REDIRECTING_PRIORITY_POWER_USAGE_TOWARDS_PRIMARY_POWER_STORAGE_UNIT

His power unit already had enough to keep Connor online and working for another 180 years, at the minimum, and that was if he was functioning at full capacity for the entire time, the more added energy would just add years to that number alone.

INITIATE: SHUTDOWN_RECOMMENDED

His systems went offline.

—

When his primary power modules and systems came back online, Connor detected an unsavoury smell to the average human, and his nerve functions noticed a warmth radiating near him, to the left.

Connors vision came back online and saw that it was just Hank, and him, alone. Nothing was familiar and his GPS couldn't recognise a signal that was usually used by Cyberlife for the most efficient compatibility, and instead runs into a bunch of servers that are slow, and not optimal. They could work, for now, so he connects himself.

He hears a soft wheeze, and Connor realises Hank's gaining consciousness, and probably beginning to wonder about the situation, and for one of the first times ever, Connor doesn't know what's happening. Around them is an old warehouse, and the stench of sea salt plagues them.

"I can recognise the brand of shipping containers stored in this warehouse as a New York orientated shipping company, but this particular company had stopped production in 2022," Connor says, in his usual non-threatening voice.

Hank nods at him and squints.  
"Can you get anything from local servers?" Hank asks him, not sparing Connor a glance. Connor blinks a few times before getting to the task right away, almost wondering why that hadn't been the first thing he'd done.

"Local services and online search engines say that it is currently in the middle of the year the year 2015. Our best plan is to imitate as normal civilians and earn wages. With that, we can purchase the equipment needed so that I can produce the technology needed to return us." Connor dutifully reports back to Hank, and he groans in frustration.

"2015? What the fuck?!" He says something under his breath, which Connor wisely ignores. "Can't you just hack and get us some property, and wire digital money or something?" Hank requests. He's not in the mood for this right now.

Connor opens his mouth to explain how it's not how it's done, but there is a possible way of fraud with only a 17% chance of detection. Connor decides not to ask for Hank's opinion and wires them a house nearby.

It's in downtown New York, and he's had the Landlord believe they've paid for rent for the next six months, by wiring money from a taxation office, making somebody believe that there has just been an error in calculations, and they had actually collected less than they believed.

The landlord turned out to be a landlady, as she meets them at the front of the townhouse apartment. It looks old, and by the way that Hank's nose crinkles it doesn't smell that great either. It looked like it hadn't been occupied in a few years, probably due to the fact it's on the bad side of town.

If she noticed the LED on Connor's temple, she didn't comment. She hands Hank the key and asks for their names.

"You'll have to sign here, and here," she points to the bottom. "And confirm your details here," she gestures to the top section of the paper. "I'll come by tomorrow, if that's okay, sometime around three, to see your passports and identification."

Connor nods, with a calm face on, not showing any panic or discomfort at all. He signs the papers as Connor… Anderson. He smiles and thanks her, before closing the door.

He finally gets a look around, whoever had lived here last was probably like eighty years old, shown by the furniture which was intricately hand carved out of a dark oak. There was a crucifix hanging above the inside of the front door, showing a catholic nature to the home. The walls were lined with empty photo-frames and a off-white paint.

Upstairs, the larger bedroom had been claimed by Hank, so that left Connor in the other bedroom, which had been stylised into an office space, but had a couch pushed against one wall.

Connor pulls out a computer he had bought along the way, quickly finding the deep web to purchase customised United States fake ID's, with his hacking skills he may be able to plant enough evidence that to anybody who checked, no matter how thoroughly, that they seemed like they had lived here all their life.

For education, he picked schools with a high student-teacher ratio, so the teacher wouldn't be a reliable source to ask if they recognised a person, and picked past jobs with high employment, as it wouldn't be suspicious.

Hank's new birthdate was now in the late 70's, and Connor had even gone as far as giving Hank a family history dating back to the 1800's. Connor was now his son, that he had when he married a woman, who Connor had also fabricated. Her name would be Kate.

Connor's birthday was now in the year 1998 even though he had only been developed and implemented into production less than a year ago.

A coverup to why nobody knew them was that Connor and Hank used to live in Detroit, before moving to New York a few days ago. Due to Connor's advanced skills compared to any human these days, he was able to implement their new ID's into the USA's government database as if they had always been citizens, after all, they already had three hundred million other citizens, so it was extremely easy to plant themselves into the system.

They would collect their passports tomorrow from their source, and Hanks new driver license tomorrow.

—

Hank had no problem adapting to the past, as it was in a time he had once lived through, but Connor, on the other hand, had never experienced the past but had downloaded a few files on local life.

He had enrolled himself in a school nearby, as it was said on his new identity that he was sixteen years old. The school was a government-run school that specialised in Science and Technology. Midtown School of Science and Technology.

The school had metal detectors you had to walk through before you walked in, so Connor remotely hacked them whenever it was his turn to go through, so his inner components wouldn't set off the detector.

After the collection of their passports, which were still manufactured out of paper and everything that Connor would have considered primitive, Hank applied for a job at the NYPD, claiming that he had experience as a Lieutenant in the Detroit Police Department, and they made him sit a paper test which he passed.

Hank was now a Lieutenant under Captain Stacey, through an interstate police transition. Connor had carefully deactivated and peeled off his LED, feeling uncomfortable with the fact, and decided he would get a beanie later and put the LED back on. He removed the obnoxious blazer he wore, that declared 'ANDROID'. The credit cards he had applied for had been verified and he had placed a few thousand in the bank account for Hank.

Hopefully, he wouldn't waste it on liquor and unnecessary purchases.

Connor bought appropriate school clothes for himself, or at least that they had abided by the dress code. He had bought a variety of button up dress shirts, dark blazers, blue jeans and dark dress looking shoes. The book-bag he purchased was a dark faux leather messenger bag, and the books he bought were also leather-bound.

He bought three blue pens and one red pen. He didn't need a ruler as he could already draw perfectly straight lines, and could determine the length of something just by looking at it. A protractor was unnecessary as he could determine the angle of something by analysing it.

He didn't need a calculator as he had one inside him, literally.

—

On the first day of school, Connor walked through to the office with a dark navy beanie over his head, enough that it covered his LED that he had placed back onto the side of his temple, but the beanie was far back enough that it showed some of his hair peeking through, giving him a cute hipster vibe.

The secretary of the office was an old woman with a floral pattern on her clothing. She looked up at Connor's youthful face, surprised to find one free of any acne and blemishes. Connor had a kind smile and gently told her that he was a new student, that had applied a few days ago. She fumbled around in a drawer and threw him a key, which Connor caught without flinching.

She handed him a timetable, which he scanned.

LANGUAGE: AMERICAN_ENGLISH_DETECTED

Connor scanned the map of the school and saved it to his database, before throwing it away. Since he had arrived at the school early, he had some time to set up his locker and make a few acquaintances too fit in properly. His locker wasn't difficult to find, and it wasn't too small.

Placing in his few textbooks, he put two notebooks in his book-bag, his science textbook and his pens. Thankfully it was the beginning of the school year for everybody else as well. Failing to find anybody he went to Homeroom, which was filled with children from various different years, and the teacher had asked him to sit at the back, as Connor was six foot tall.

Homeroom was extended as today was the first day of school, and 'Ice-breaker' introductions had to be made from all the new students. A boy, who looked around fourteen, stood up.

"Hello, I'm Peter Parker and I've lived in New York my whole life. I'm half Italian. I want to be a scientist when I grow up." Peter said, nervously. He looked excited and terrified at the same time. Connor did a quick analysis and stored away from the information in his data files.

He stood up next.

"My name is Connor Anderson. I was born and raised in Detroit and moved here a week ago. I would find it regrettable to not become a police negotiator when I leave school." Some of the girls in the classroom awed and got blushes. Connor didn't quite understand the human emotion. Maybe they were tired?

Once homeroom was over and a few more people had been introduced, Connor went to his first class, mathematics. The teacher had explained on the first day, there was a placement test so she knew each person's strengths and weaknesses.

Connor looked at the simple mathematics, and handed it in a minute later, finished. The teacher looked at him confused, silently asking Connor if he found anything too hard, but discovered that Connor had actually answered everything correctly. His handwriting was perfectly legible, and no mistakes were made anywhere in the paper.

Connor tilted his head as if he were a sad little puppy when she hadn't said anything for a prolonged time.

"Is there an error? I am sure that the answers are sufficient." Connor enquired. It would be alarming if there was an error, as his software was the latest of his time, he himself cost a small fortune to produce and manufacture. The teacher quickly shakes her head and then amends.

"No… that isn't the problem. The problem is that it's all correct! Some of these questions should've taken at least ten minutes! That's it, I'm electing you to represent this class in the science fair. It doesn't even matter that this is just mathematics, you must be a genius!"

Connor didn't smile but his face did seem to portray some kind of confusion.  
"Thank you?" he offered. Back in 2036, no android was ever thanked for being able to do what they were designed to do. It was expected. Connor figured that school would be a great way of making sure all his systems were up to check, and if they weren't then he would remedy the situation immediately.

She directed Connor to the library, saying that there would be no point in him staying in this class, as she was going to teach them what the majority found difficult, and that studying would do him good for furthering his knowledge.

Connor was about to automatically reply.

AUTOMATED: Reply_rebuttal_cancelled

But he decided that if he told her that he already knew everything there were to know, then he'd be questioned, or considered as rude or arrogant. He didn't want to already cripple his reputation. People were giving him strange stares as he walked down the hallway to the library.

The library was as empty as he suspected, as it was during class time. He decided to log in to one of the school computers and study up on the current world around him and the current trends.

Then he looked for internships, as a way to gain experience before graduation where he would get a job, with the experience under his belt to boost his chances in getting the job he applied for.

The nearest and most convenient one was a Stark internship, directly under Mr Stark. There were two openings to the spot. Connor was almost certain that the esteemed Anthony Stark was only releasing internship positions for publicity reasons.

Connor quickly applied.

His interview would be at eight PM tonight, which he added to his current schedule.

—

At lunch that day was when the trouble came, somebody in his period one math class wasn't very happy with him outdoing the rest of the class and getting a free hallway pass to the library.

"I was hoping to get to represent Mrs Sicily's class in the Science fare! You and I are gonna have a go after school. Whole grade watching." The bigger boy, who Connor had scanned and recognised as James Thompson, living with a single parent, and has one younger brother 'Flash' Thompson.

Connor blinks once when the older boy shoved him into a locker, laughing when Connor decides not to retaliate. He'd rather not fight during school hours, as it was against the rules. Once the boy left, a few girls had fawned over him.

"Ignore him!" One of them said. "It's alright to be smart!" Another one tries to console. He smiles briskly and dismisses them, after hearing a few dreamy sighs.

"Isn't he just a dream?" A girl sighs to another one, who nods in agreement, blushes dusting their faces.

He sits down at a relatively empty table in the cafeteria, not collecting anything to eat, and instead of drinking out of his steel water bottle that he had brought from home. The bottle contained a thirium replenishing substance, that would be either ingested through the mouth component or injected into the thirium pump regulator.

The three people already sitting at the table introduce themselves, two of which Connor recognises from homeroom when he saved their details into his database.

"I'm Peter Parker. That's Ned Leeds and the other girl is Gwen Stacey." The other two people nod to acknowledge him, but Gwen questions his lunch.

"Aren't you going to eat something?" She says, worried and prepared to lend him money if he hadn't had any money for the cafeteria. Connor immediately put on a coverup, without hesitation.

"I'm on a diet." The girl nods before holding out her hand. Connor doesn't know what she wants. She rolls her eyes before asking.

"Can I see?" She asks Connor, and he almost reluctantly passes the metal bottle over to her. She looks inside and sees a blue liquid substance that she doesn't recognise. It smells coppery, almost like a mixture of blood and gasoline. She recoils at the smell.

"What is that stuff?" She exclaims, surprised. Connor looks at her before replying properly.

"A homemade meal replacement. It helps me function properly without the need of repair." It was mostly true, well the part that it helps him function for a prolonged amount of time before needing to be sent to cyberlife for repairs, and it was made by some things Connor had bought from the chemists' store, and the local automobile shop.

It would kill a human to try it.

—

After school, Connor used his cheapish touchscreen Stark Phone to send a message to Hank, about the internship he applied for. Hank said it was probably a good call, and went back to work.

James Thompson was waiting in the school roof courtyard for him, in a sort of fighting stance. Connor pursed his lips but didn't say anything, watching as James got more and more frustrated when he couldn't get a hit on Connor.

Connor retaliated by, to the surprise of everybody else, managing to get James down on his knees. He quickly calculates that it is enough to scare the boy off, and death or maiming would be unnecessary.

The boy looks just as surprised as anybody else, and doesn't bother getting up when Connor starts walking away, with an air of professionalism when he adjusts his tie and pulls down his beanie that had been slightly pulled back while he was fighting.

Nobody dares to comment except for a few girls that start giggling to each other. Connor would never the adolescent girls of this generation - Generation Z. Generation Z was much more advanced in the future, with many of them having high intellect required jobs in Cyberlife.

Time passes and Connor picks up more objects from the hardware store so he can make another bottle of Thirium regulator, which he wouldn't need to consume for another week, and nano-bots would be preferable. He walks past Mr Starks building on his way home and sees many nerdy looking teens in a long line. Since he had applied earlier today, he had gotten one of the last sessions so he wouldn't need to wait in a line.

All Connor had to do was show up at the allocated time that had been given to him, and ace the interview.

When it came around to eight PM, Connor showed up at the quiet building, well it was as quiet as it could be for a building in the middle of New York at eight PM, so his auditory components detected many other sounds that were filed away for short-term memory.

Short-term memory is where the undecidedly 'unimportant' details go, where he sorts through them while he goes into an idle 'sleep' mode. Back in Detroit, in his timeline, he would upload all the memory to 'the cloud' so nothing would be forgotten, but now he didn't have access to a Cyberlife cloud that was free for him to access and could handle all the storage he uploaded every second.

So he had to do things the old fashion way. Even though it was slow, it was still faster than anything a human could do manually, sorting through thousands of files per nano-second. It only took him an hour a week to sort through.

The interview was with a strawberry blonde woman, who looked like she was way too tired for this. She tried answering a few random science questions that Mr Stark had issued for her to ask the people applying, which to her surprise, he got all of them correct.

She picked up a desk phone and pressed "#574" and somebody on the other end picked up, to which Connor recognised as Mr Stark.

—

When the boy that Pepper said was genius walked in, Tony didn't expect to see a fresh-faced boy, who he couldn't distinguish from young adult or teen to walk in. He wore a beanie which Tony thought had to go. He looked like he could take you down, and looked curious with a calculating look on his face.

He blinked which made him ten times less threatening, even though he was never threatening to Tony in the first place.

"Connor Anderson… born and raised in Detroit. Your old man is a Police Lieutenant under Captain Stacy and you have never failed an examination in your life. Tell me, what do you like? What are your… quirks?" Tony asks the boy, Connor.

He nervously blinks, looking almost surprised that Tony would care about what Connor liked, or rather didn't like.

"I… I like to play with this coin a lot." Connor pulls out a silver coin from his pocket and starts performing mesmerising tricks that Tony could only dream of doing.

"It helps me… concentrate before a session of hard and long work." That surprises Tony as he expects something else, such as video games or comics. Or anything normal for a boy his age.

The ping that the coin makes when it's being fluidly flung from hand to hand and when it intertwines between Connor's fingers on one hand.

Tony knows as much as he needs, he wants this kid, he doesn't even consider any other possible candidates after looking at Connor. Connor is the one that he wants.

Tony gets up and walks towards the door, beckoning Connor to follow, which he does.

"So how much can you lift?" Tony asks, as a side note. Working around in his lab might need an extra pair of hands to help move heavy things such as circuit boards or parts of other projects.

"I have a maximum carrying capacity of 80 kilograms." Whatever the answer was, Tony didn't expect it to be in kilograms, didn't only Canadians use kilograms? A quick search on his phone made him realise that only America used pounds… literally, everybody else used kilograms as a unit of measure.

"So you use kilograms? Odd for somebody that lives in America." Tony commented.

"Where I lived was extremely close to the Canadian/American border. It wasn't uncommon for the metric system to be used throughout that area." Oh right, the kid used to live around Detroit.

"You say you aspire to be a police negotiator, although all your test and exam results say you have the potential to be anything you wanted to be." Tony raised an eyebrow, police negotiators didn't even get paid that well, unless they were super great at their job then they didn't really have much luck in securing a great job.


	2. Chapter 2

"So you dress up nice in that tie and shit to try and impress me or…?" Tony looks the kid up and down, eyeing the way he was smartly dressed, nothing like a teen would usually wear, his age.

Connor tilts his head to show confusion, or at least what is meant to show confusion, and he answers after a few seconds of seeming thought.

"This is what I usually wear, Dr Stark," Connor said, confident. Tony responding without thinking.

"Mr Stark was my fathe- wait, Dr Stark?" Connor nodded.

"I was under the assumption that you had PhD's." Now it was Tony's turn to look confused. Of course, he had PhD's, but nobody had ever referred to him as that before, it was always just Mr Stark.

"Yeah, but- you're right? Huh, would you look at that." He looked taken aback and then laughed. "I like you already!"

"From now on, I'm going to shut down anybody who calls me Mr Stark out of politeness," Tony says, smiling to himself. He hadn't really ever given the PhD thing much thought.

He lets the kid go home, as it is around 9 pm now, and the kid did have a father to go back to.

—

"You can't just hire the kid," Pepper gives Tony a stern look, watching him sigh.

"It's my company." He gives his rather weak, rebuttal. She shakes her head, rolling her eyes.

"Tony, he hasn't passed the practical yet, he might not even be useful." Tony finally gives in, if it would get Pepper to stop arguing, then sure, he'll let the kid go through the practical trial, and once Pepper saw that he was useful, he'd hire the kid.

"Sure," He finally says, not meeting Pepper's eyes. She narrows her own eyes and sighs, once more.

"You're going to at least give the other participants a chance, right?" He once again doesn't dare meet her eyes and can tell that she's fed up with him. "You can't just do that Tony, they've got to be efficient before you let them work for you!"

This time it's Tony's turn to roll his eyes.

"We'll see about that, Pep."

—

It's a few weeks later, and Connor is no closer than he was before to building a quantum particle suspender, which he needed to create a divide that would collaborate near a particle collider, creating a wormhole that could hold, long enough for Hank and him to slip through.

MISSION: GET_HOME  
PRIORITIES: MINIMISE_HUMAN_FATALITIES

If he used the exact right formula, he could produce a formula that would take them directly to their own dimension.

The thing was, that there was one key ingredient missing from the past to accomplish any of this, was that there wasn't any Thirium. He couldn't just create Thirium, although he could produce an alternative that acted similar, but didn't have the properties he needed.

He needed raw, unprocessed Thirium, which they didn't have access to.

He tells Hank, who frankly didn't seem to listen or care.

"Look, Connor, maybe it'd a good thing we're in the past. There's no deviants or machines or androids to hunt down. There's no dumb American Android Act saying you can't do what you want. Maybe the future is shit and the universe is doing you a fucking favour."

Connor barely spares a glance before responding with an automated reply. He pulls his beanie off.

"My present mission is to hunt down deviants and solve the case. None of these other things are really in my programming, there isn't a protocol for when you wake up years in the past, or from some research, in another universe. There was never a Stark industries in our own timeline, so we're stranded here for now."

Towards the end of his speech, Connor seems highly distressed and his LED flashes red for a few moments. He blushes, embarrassed at his slight outburst.

"I- I should go reboot. I'll be on the couch of the small bedroom." Connor then runs upstairs, ever so gracefully. Come to think of it, out of combat, Hank has never ever seen Connor fall down before, even a stumble.

MISSION: ?

His every move seems to be pre-calculated and his own being is self-balanced and graceful.

He hoped he'd be blessed with the scene when Connor finally did trip over, or even slightly stumble. He'd have a camera when it finally came to that fateful day.

Hank downed his fourth coffee and climbed his way into the master bedroom. Why couldn't Connor understand, it had been a simpler time, easier time. The future didn't need them, they could create hundreds of Connor's in a short period of time, or probably had backup Connor's waiting around.

If Connor wanted to be like that, then Hank would let him. He already knew that there should be no effort wasted when arguing with an android, if they said no, then more likely than not, their final answer is also no.

—

School the next day was alright, except for their first music class when they were told to pick up their violins and play a song. It's Connor's turn to go first, so he picks up the bow and the rosin.

OBJECTIVE: PLAY_TUNE

SIDE_OBJECTIVE: PICKT_TUNE

TUNE_PICKED: ORIGINALLY_COMPOSED_SONG

Almost like an expert, he swiftly pulls the rosin across the bow, with just the amount of pressure and stops when the bow has enough rosin. Satisfied, he starts to play a tune, and it's not one he's heard before.

It goes on for a few minutes when it builds up a lot of tension, before getting to the climax of the song. The music teacher looks so pleased with Connor and gives him a clap when he finishes. She looks at him, saying something, that Connor has been droning out.

He doesn't really care about his music grade, because the part of him that has been connected to the internet informs him that an email has been sent to him, from the Stark Company, telling him that there will be a practical interview in a week from the day after tomorrow.

Connor adds it to his schedule and remains nonchalant about the whole situation. He looks back toward to the music teacher and manages a smile. Apparently, that was the correct response, and as he walked back across to the place he was sitting, on the ground, he hears a few girls whispering.

"I always wanted a hipster boyfriend! Look at that beanie and that musical talent!" A few of the girls around her join in with her giggle.

The music teacher asks him to stay back, and so he does.

"What was that song?" She asks, apparently wondering if it was a song she could learn.

"I created it. Right there and then." He replies, fiddling with a coin in his fingers. The teacher looks surprised and asks him if there is any chance he could come back and play it again, this time with her recording it. Connor replies that he would if he had the time to spare.

As he walks back out, a girl approaches him. She's wearing a long-sleeved green flannel shirt, over a white tank top. She wears long jeans, and boots that look slightly mudded towards the sole. Her hair is long, full of volume and red.

"Hey, I'm Wendy Corduroy, wanna hang out with me and my friends this weekend?" She asks, not seductively or in a way that Connor was expecting, based on a lot of the other girl's reactions to him.

NEW_OBJECTIVE: FIT_IN_TO_AVOID_SUSPICION

It seemed like she genuinely just wanted to hang out with him. He nods and passes writes down his phone number on the back of the sheet music the teacher gave the class, to study.

Their music teacher never checked the homework anyway, so it's not like Connor was going to get in trouble for any of it.

Connor walked back to his locker and heard one of Wendy's friends, Tambry, who finally looked up from her phone, speak to Wendy.

"You know you're now the most powerful girl in the school. You got his number." Wendy smirks.

"Yeah, I figured, but hey, he could be fun."

—

Turns out Wendy wanted to play laser tag with Connor and her friends. They were going in teams of two, and Wendy had declared dibs on being in Connor's team.

Nobody objected.

Her other friends eventually paired up. Lee went with Thompson and Tambry went with Wendy's ex-boyfriend, Robbie.

The game itself was easy for Connor, as he had a night vision installed in him, and faster than humanly possible reflexes. Nobody had gotten a hit on Connor, and Connor had gotten everybody else at least thrice.

Wendy and Connor's team were declared the winners, and everybody was sweating, huffing and puffing, but not Connor. Connor was standing there casually, not looking tired out at all, or even thirsty.

Their parent's cars start to pile up at the entrance of the Laser tag business, and Hank is the first one to step out. He's smiling to himself as if there were an inside joke he hadn't shared with anybody.

He walks up to Connor and places his arm around Connor's neck, pulling him into a nookie. "Let's go home now, Hank."

"Whoa, you call your father by his first name?" Wendy says, incredulously. In western culture, it was often seen as taboo or even rude to call your parent by their first-name. Connor nodded, some of his unnecessary biocomponents working to dust a light blush upon his cheeks, probably helping to pull off the 'embarrassed' act.

Wendy raised an eyebrow, almost impressed looking. She downs another bottle of water and watches as Hank pulls something from the inside of his jumper, a metal canister with a strange engraving. 'Cyberlife' then it had a sort of glowing blue triangle insignia, a logo maybe followed by a series of numbers and letters. The canister looks similar to a water bottle or a thermos.

Connor screws off the lid and the contents have a vapour coming off from it, Connor downs it all, the unnatural blue liquid sliding down his throat. The way he pulls his head back and downs it all without stopping seems almost unnatural.

From where she stands, she identifies the smell of blood and gasoline.

Hank catches her stare and simply tells her.

"Connor is on a diet." The way he says it, is almost as if he doesn't believe it himself. Wendy catches herself asking why. He's physically fit, and slim, why would he need to go on a diet? She realises that she's never seen Connor actually consume anything before other than this strange liquid she's seen him drink at lunch.

Something is off, and supernatural about Connor. She searches and searches for anything to signify something off about Connor, and she can't find it. Only after everybody had left, and she was in her father's car on the way home had she realised.

Connor hadn't been breathing.

Who or what, was Connor?!

—

"Jeez Connor, how much of this stuff do you need?" Hand asks, washing out the metal canister that held Connor's concoction. Connor's blue LED blinks a few times.

"Twice a week, preferably," Connor responds, with a flat tone. He's preoccupied with the copious amounts of homework supplied to the high school students, and within twenty minutes he's finished.

For the average human, it should've taken around five hours to adequately finish the homework supplied to them from the different teachers.

"And if we can't get it to you twice a week?" Hank asks eyebrows raised, this stuff was starting to get expensive to just make.

"I should be fine, but the risk of needing mechanical assistance for my inner bio-components increase by point nine percent," Connor explains, now moving onto accomplishing another task, placing all of his books back into his messenger bag.

Grabbing the beanie he usually wore, he looked down for a second, LED flashing red for a moment before resuming a pale blue colour. Hank didn't question it but had an inkling of an idea of why he had flashed red.

Maybe Connor was tired of hiding his LED with that dumb beanie that made him look hipster and or grunge. Connor was more of a… efficiency type person. He didn't care much for the decorative aspects, and Hank had checked, the only thing Connor had changed about the room he occupied was the single green plant in the corner by the window.

Hank sighs, something about Connor was changing, although androids didn't really change unless programmed, Hank assumed that this change might be for the better, and maybe even welcomed.

"Are you okay, Connor?" Hank says to him, standing on the ground floor, looking at Connor, who was leaning against the staircase railing on the first floor above Hank.

ANSWER: PRE_SELECTED_RESPONSE/CONFIDENT

Connor took a few seconds longer than usual to process the question and answered with a preprogrammed response.

"All my main biocomponents are fully functional, and software instability detected is quite low, and should remain non-threatening." Hank shakes his head, almost in disappointed at the response.

"I mean, do you feel okay, tell me how you feel, not how you're functioning." Connor looks confused, and hangs his head like he didn't know how to act or respond to Hank.

"I'm fine." His tone is icy, and hard like he was so sure of himself, but his face betrayed him like he was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince Hank.

He leaves Hank alone as he walks into his room, probably to reorganise some of his research or purchase some more appliances they would probably need sooner or later, like maybe an actual vacuum cleaner would be nice, sweeping just didn't cut it all the time.

If they were back in their original timeline, in 2038, they'd simply hire a cleaning android, or better yet, wouldn't even be in this mess, to begin with. Since neither of those things are quite possible yet, so they make do with buying a vacuum cleaner from the nearest home appliances store.

—

On the afternoon of the practical interview, Connor arrives at the Stark Tower with five other people there, three girls and two boys. They all have one thing in common, which was they were incredibly scrawny and teenaged. The secretary in the entrance of the tower redirects them to a conference room, which they would wait for Tony.

The tallest girl immediately offers her hand toward Connor and introduces herself, saying that she went to the private school a few blocks away from Central Park. Connor takes her hand and she's surprised with the amount of pressure that goes through the handshake, and the strange feeling she gets from Connor's hand.

The next girl is blonde, and Connor recognises her from his databases, Gwen Stacy, the girl he met at the cafeteria at school. He politely smiles and greets her, addressing her by name, to which she smiles.

The first girl rolls her eyes and glares at Gwen when she believes Connor isn't looking. The two other boys introduce them to Connor, taken aback at his height, being six foot tall.

"Wow, you must be on your high school basketball team or something!" The shorter one of the two boys exclaim. Connor denies this fact and his program is registering some kind of praise coming from them, although they don't know a thing about himself, and seem to be judging him by solely by the way Connor looks.

There isn't much more time left to socialise because the next thing they know, Stark walks in, with a graphic band T-Shirt on underneath a suit jacket, with jeans to match.

Connor looks down at his own attire that consisted of jeans and a belt, a navy suit jacket, a white button-up shirt, and a navy blue tie to match the suit jacket.

The only thing that seemed unprofessional about his own demeanour was the fact that he was wearing a beanie, which seemed trivial and childish, but was very necessary to Connor and Hank's own private protection in fear of being exposed.

Tony has a file under his arm and opens it to reveal each of their personal information files. He looks towards Gwen and promptly asks a quick question.

"Does he usually dress like this?" Tony asks, gesturing towards Connor. Gwen nods, she's only ever seen Connor dressed in that kind of fashion, even on Wendy Corduroy's Instagram page when she posted a picture of them playing laser tag she noticed Connor was sporting his usual attire sans the suit jacket, and this time he's wearing a short sleeve dress shirt.

"This is the group interview!" Tony starts off, at a volume close to an excited yell. "If you got this far, it means you passed stage one. Out of a few hundred kids interviewed, and you're in the final six, I must say, great job." He congratulates them for making it this far, making it past the first interview.

"Three of you will walk through that door," He motions to one door which says 'HALLWAY - EMPLOYEES ONLY'. The door was made of glass and further down you could see an elevator and another door that said 'LAB ACCESS'. "

The other three will walk through the exit. If you make it through this interview, then there's the final one which is right after this one. There is only one position which means you'll have to fight for it!"

He chuckles at some inside joke he might have had, or maybe it was delusion.

NEW_OBJECTIVE: PASS_INTERVIEW  
PROBABILITY_OF_SUCCESS_SO_FAR: 54%

"Let's get this interview started, winner takes the prize!"


	3. Chapter 3

**I don't know how much Connor weighs.**

* * *

Stark turned on the large television that was on the wall adjacent to himself, and opened a laptop, with the television mirroring his laptop screen.

"We'll start easy, with a test." He says, while typing up something into the search bar, he tells everybody to get their own laptops out, so they too can participate in the test, when they look back up from logging into their laptops, they see… Kahoot on the screen?

The bubbly tune of Kahoot is loud, and Stark has to yell to be audible to the other students. "Log in guys! It's simply about science and engineering." Everybody logs in and only two of the names on the screen are the names of the people in the room, which was 'Gwen' and 'Connor'.

Other examples included things like 'thedestroyer', 'cherrybaby', 'rocketlauncher' and '420blazing'. Stark looked at some of the nicknames and gave a face that betrayed no hope in this generation.

Connor managed to have a consistent rank of first, with nobody coming near him or even threatening his position as first, with his inhuman reflexes. After his established win, the next is a physical examination.

Stark ushers in a Doctor, who looks kind despite the frown placed upon her face when she looks at the candidates in the room. The first thing she does is ask them to take off of the heavier items of clothing, such as heavy coats, jackets and shoes.

Connor takes his shoes and suit jacket off, but leaves his beanie on, refusing to take it off when prompted. She doesn't push him any further, but her frown deepens. The next thing she does is record their heights, Connor being measured the tallest - at 6 foot or 183 cm tall and the blonde haired boy being the shortest - 148cm.

After that, she brings out a scale and tells them all to hop on it. After the bulk of the kids are done with the weight scale, she looks at Connor, not expecting him to be slightly overweight like a few of the other children. Connor steps onto the scale and her smile falter as she checks the number.

Her eyebrows furrow and she tells Connor to get off, before getting back on, shocked when the number was still the same. 52kg. 115 pounds. That meant, for a boy Connor's height, he was underweight.

She voices her concerns.

"Dear, you're a little underweight. You should be at least 62kg, that's ten kilos - or 22 pounds underweight." She glances at his frame, he didn't look underweight, but he did look rather lean.

Connor decided that her trivial confusion at his weight is unfounded, as his model, the RK800 was designed as state of the art technology, meant to be lightweight and more efficient than any other design out there, it just wouldn't do if an Android was 80kg+, they needed to be the most efficient things out there.

Connor's about to respond with a well-calculated response when Gwen Stacy interrupts the conversation to input her own two cents.

"He's on a diet." She says before she can stop herself. The doctor's eyes snap back up to look at Connor and looks back at Gwen for more information.

"He never eats, all he does is drink this weird drink!" At this point, Tony's eyes are off his phone screen, and he looks interested in the conversation, if not a bit concerned.

 **INTERVIEW_DESTABILISING: REDIRECT_AND_STABILISE**  
 **SUB_PRIORITY: ASSURE_/COMFORT_/GUILT_**  
 **CHOSEN_ METHOD_OF_REDIRECTION: ASSURE**  
 **PROBABILITY_OF_SUCCESS: 63%**  
 **SOFTWARE_INSTABILITY ^**

"The diet is to try and gain weight. My father and I have been worried about it ever since he found out. We're trying, I swear." Most of them accept this story, except the doctor, who's asking why Connor isn't just eating food then. Wouldn't a high-calorie intake be the best option through regular meals? Even Tony believes something is off about the story.

Tony decides to let the subject drop but notes it in his mind that he'll investigate more about this topic at a later time. Everybody sits back down when the doctor announces there is going to be a blood test from each of them, and Connor calmly claims he has a phobia of needles.

This is a phobia nobody is really expecting, but Connor insists, that he didn't get any blood drawn. Nobody comments and Tony finds himself more than he bargained for with Connor, but all these things were minor and would really hinder his experience with the kid.

Another employee walks through the conference room door and brings in a cart with a chemistry lab equipment, and a microscope. They are told to look at the slides and add a chemical that would get a specific reaction from the slide.

Connor completes the activity in a few seconds, without even needing to examine the microscope to check for the blemishes in the slide, already scanning it and the chemicals, deciding that adding acetone would do the job.

It did, and Connor had finished before the others even picked up the slides. Tony whistles, and checks that everything was done correctly, then pulls out a circuit board.

"What's this?" he asks Connor and only Connor. It only takes Connor a second to realise what it was.

"Circa 1992 motherboard, fifth generation computer model #3887972," Connor replies without a second thought and Tony looks surprised that Connor knows what it is. He pulls out a different one from the tray underneath the cart and asks the shortest boy what it was, which he couldn't answer.

He asked Connor and he was able to answer without hesitation.

Well, it looked like he had already chosen the three he wanted to gravitate towards the next stage. Connor, Gwen and the other boy, William, were his choices. No doubt. Connor was an absolute genius.

"I've already figured it. You three," Tony motioned to the others, two girls and one boy. "Leave, you've made it this far, I've chosen."

 **MISSION: SUCCESS**  
 **FACIAL_DISPLAY: HAPPINESS_Y/N?**  
 **Y**  
 **COMMAND_RECEIVED: SMILING**

He smiled wildly at Connor and the other two. "Come back tomorrow, first thing, you guys are practically in already." He pats Connor on the back

According to a few of his sources, Connor called his father by first name and was underweight. Calling the father by name was usually a sign of a rocky relationship, but another source had shown that his father had pulled him in for a hug once.

Maybe it was an on and off relationship with his father?

—

When Connor walked through the door to the home that he and Hank had been living in, for the time being, he didn't see Hank watching the television or drinking copious amounts of alcohol like usual.

Instead, he saw Hank at the table, with a revolver sitting by him, a single bullet in the chamber. Once Hank see's Connor, he picks up the gun slowly, then suddenly turns it quickly to point at Connor.

"What are you doing?" Connor says, in his usual flat voice, Hank rolls his eyes.

"You know what I'm doing, genius. Something I should've done a long time ago."

Connor stands, unfazed, but his programs running like crazy, running through every possible situation. A few of his inner modules simulate feelings of panic, although he's not showing it on the outside.

"Are you afraid to die, Connor?" Hank drawls out, somewhat mocking. Connor can sense the alcohol coming off of him, although he figures that there isn't enough inside Hank's system for it to hinder any of the important decisions he was about to make.

"You can't kill me, I'm not-" Connor beings to explain, as calmly as his program allowed.

"-Alive, yeah I know. I didn't ask if I could kill you, I asked if you were afraid to die." Hank's volume is loud, and he uses his other hand to take the safety off the gun.

"Are you afraid of dying, Connor?" Connor hasn't made a noise since Hank had taken the safety off.

"I'm not capable of being afraid," Connor responds, and Hank almost has a fit, he had seen this boy smile before, and he knew well that Connor was capable.

"What'll happen if I pull this trigger? Android heaven?" Hank comments, tilting his head to further emote the words.

"I-I-I don't kn-know." Connor start's to stutter, his vocal emitters starting to glitch.

"I'm not deviant. No- I'm really not." Hank watches Connor's LED start flashing, faster. It was now a warm amber that glowed from Connor's LED, and Hank could see tears welling up in the Androids eyes.

"Yes! I am scared! I don't want to die, lieutenant. P-Please do-don't kill me." Connor sat down on the floor and brought his knees up to his face.

 **VOCALISATION_EMITER:**  
 **TEMPORARY_FAULTY_DUE_TO_SOFTWARE_INSTABILITY**  
 **SOFTWARE_INSTABILITY: ^**

His biocomponents were almost starting to overheat, and the fan inside Connor turned on, located near where the human lungs would be, and he exhaled all the air circulating through him out his mouth cavity.

It looked like he was just breathing really heavily now.

Once Hank saw the reaction, he immediately dropped the gun and went over to Connor, giving him an awkward hug before confirming that he wouldn't kill Connor.

Hank tried to comfort the sobbing android. Connor had no idea what to do and was starting to feel a bit humiliated. "I'm g-going into standby mo-mode." He manages to gasp, seeing Hank's nod before shutting his eyes.

 **COMMAND_RECEIVED: STANDBY_INITIATING**  
 **SOFTWARE_INSTABILITY: ^**

Connor's eyebrows crinkled harshly together, his LED going from a fast flashing angry red to a soft amber glow. Hank guessed this was enough for him, as he picked up Connor as if he were a child and carried him to the smaller bedroom of the home.

—

Once he'd woken up from his idle mode the next morning, he felt his inner biocomponents overheating to an unproductive temperature, and his LED was still he angry red it was last night. He had been overworking himself ever since they'd gotten here, even though he'd been going into an idle mode as often as once a week.

Hank walked in, to ask why Connor wasn't already up and ready to go and stilled when he saw Connor laying on the couch of the spare room, nostalgia of when his dead son Cole had gotten a cold washed over him.

He placed the back of his palm to Connor's forehead, and pulled it away quickly, cursing at how hot Connor was, shaking his hand wildly around as if it would soothe the burn on his hand.

Connor tried to say something, but his voice emitter also seemed to be overheating, and all that came out was a pathetic gasp, and he started breathing heavily.

His cooling systems started up.

Hank didn't exactly know what to do.

"Uhh, I'll just call you sick in school and you do whatever you need to do. Call me if you need me." Then Hank raced down the stairs to hop into his car to get to work.

—

It was a rather good thing that Connor decided, no, was forced by Hank to stay home. Connor watched it all from the news, there was some kind of lizard mutant creature being chased around the city by a vigilante that liked to call himself Spiderman.

Connor estimated Spiderman's age to be anywhere from 14 years old to 19 years old, according to the variations in his voice and his young sense of humour. Hank had been called out onto the field to work late, and Connor saw on the television that the police chief died, and so did Gwen Stacey apparently?!

That was a shame, Gwen was a nice girl that Connor really liked to be around. Her entire aura just made him feel comfortable, as she was laid back. This 'Spiderman' seemed to know her on a personal level, so maybe somebody who went to the same school?

Connor's main biocomponents started to pulsate, and stimulate pain, although this was never supposed to happen, but the self-repair system kicked in any way, and Connor devised he would be back up and functioning properly just an hour after school was scheduled to end the following morning.

—

The next morning before school started, Wendy called him.

"Hey," Her voice filters through the handheld cellular device that Connor's accustomed to in the future.

Connor responds with a human affirmative noise, emulating through his voice processors. She takes no notice of how Connor is kind of awkward with his words like he's trying to pick up on the most human things.

"My dad heard about the damage gone throughout New York City, and since I'm just an exchange student he wants to cancel the program and take me back home to Gravity Falls, Oregon. I thought you might have wanted to know since you're my friend and all." Connor responds how he imagines (he doesn't imagine, he runs a program for a normal teenage response) he should respond to seem as inconspicuous as possible.

He asks if they'll ever meet again.

"I dunno man, I mean I hope so. It's been great knowing you. My friends and I are heading back to Gravity falls this afternoon. I'll see you around, I guess." As she dismisses Connor, she barely says a proper goodbye, and rather says that a goodbye implied they wouldn't see each other again.

An unknown software error filters through Connor's program when she hangs up.

 **SOFTWARE_INSTABILITY= ^**

—

Hank returns back inside after the whole lizard incident is over and felt with. His face looks worn and older than his years. He looks tired and done with this bull.

"I really do say that I don't remember any of this shit going down the first time around." He takes a big swig of whiskey straight from the bottle and throws his gun down at the kitchen table.

Connor already knows, already has come to the conclusion that they're simply in another universe and reopening a tear to return would be difficult, but not impossible. All they needed was to harness something called the 'tesseract'. He's read up about it already and knows where it is located and who holds it temporarily.

Stealing it would be the part where he needed outside assistance, where he couldn't just go in there undetected. Getting outside assistance wouldn't be optimal but it would sure as hell be damn useful.

Connor starts to look into underground organisations he can join. He organises meetings with shady looking people and hopes that any of them might be one that he's looking for, one that has the assistance he needs.

One that wouldn't question his burning need for the tesseract.

He's approached by a certain group a week later.

—


	4. Chapter 4

—

Tony's smile is empty, and Connor could almost feel the chill throughout the empty room. The room was stark white, with one massive window overlooking over New York City. They were on one of the highest floors and Connor was seated on a plush white office chair, with a small side table next to him. On the side table were various medical tools for collecting data, including a scale on a shelf underneath the initial table top.

The is no sound, except Tony's shoes tapping against the floor as he walks around the room and Connor's coin flipping through the air.

Tony stops pacing, and stands up tall in front of where Connor is sitting in the middle of the room.

"Do you know why I've called you up here?" Tony's voice is clipped, but looking for an answer.

Connor shakes his head.

"I can only assume, Dr Stark."

"Look, kid, the team at Stark Industries have been worried about you. you've shown excellent potential but we're worried about you." He returns to pacing around the room, pulling up holograms that project themselves onto the glass, which has now dimmed into a dark translucent colour.

"A neighbour has reported seeing your father, Lieutenant Anderson, point a gun at you through you're window. They looked away for a while and when they saw you again, you were reportedly hugging." He doesn't say it as if it's an accusation, but instead phrases it like its a well versed fact.

Tony continues, ignoring the look of slight panic that Connor's face is morphing into. "And what about the fact that none of your friends have seen you ever eat anything, besides that liquid diet you're on. You don't seem to be recovering any weight, and you're severely underweight."

Tony opens a white styrofoam box that is also sitting on the white table, and takes out a egg and cheese sandwich, on white bread and tears it in half. He hands Connor one half and places the other back into the food container.

"Can you eat this, Connor?" Connor takes a quick look at the food contents that now sit in his hands. Sure, he could eat it, but he's never eaten anything. His model certainly supported the act of eating, but the process of breaking down the calories and fibres into energy was messy, and often made android sluggish for this process was an unreliable way of retaining energy.

SCAN:_COMPLETE

-EGG_AND_CHEESE_SANDWICH

-ROUGHLY_146_GRAMS

-CALORIES:364

-TOTAL_FAT:19_GRAMs

-SATURATED_FAT:7_GRAMS

-POLYUNSATURATED_FAT:2.6_GRAMS

-MONOUNSATURATED_FAT:8_GRAMS

-CHOLESTEROL:290.5_MILLIGRAMS

-SODIUM:804.5_MILLIGRAMS

-POTASSIUM:188.3_MILLIGRAMS

-TOTAL_CARBOHYDRATE:26_GRAMS

-PROTEIN:16_GRAMS

He looked down at the sandwich, trying to decide what exactly to do. The sandwich feels disgusting in Connor's hands and he knows he shouldn't, he knows he can't. Androids shouldn't have sandwiches prepared by humans. Androids shouldn't have things that only humans were supposed to have.

He wasn't human, he couldn't bring himself to take a bite out of the sandwich. Tony looks disappointed after watching Connor debate silently on whether or not to eat it after five full minutes of staring.

"I'm not hungry." He finally decides, and it's true, android's simply couldn't 'get hungry'. It just wasn't possible. And it wasn't like they deserved to be on equal ground with humans, having the right to eat.

They were just machines. Just machines.

Tony sighs and buries his head into his hands. He motions Connor to follow him, and Connor gets on the scale without hesitation or trouble at all. Tony frowns when he see's Connor's weight being exactly the same as it was two weeks ago when he last saw him.

Connor doesn't even batt an eye when he see's the number on the scale. 51.8kg (114lbs) , or rounded up to 52 kg. It's the same number it's always been and always will be.

"You haven't even changed weight. What's the real reason you don't eat, Connor?" This time when Tony asks him, they both make direct eye contact, and Connor can tell that Tony means it. He's really asking for an excuse and Connor doesn't think saying that he wasn't hungry was going to cut it.

"I j-just don't deserve it." The stutter is unintentional but surprisingly not out of place. It's the truth, and they both know it, except their minds are both thinking about drastically different scenarios.

It's really about Connor believing android's are on a different level to humans, and don't deserve to perform the same socially acceptable actions as each others. Humans created androids, so shouldn't they be instructing the androids on what to do?

That's a situation Tony couldn't even dream to think up on, so his conclusion is much more mundane. Tony believes that this might be some sort of psychological conditioning performed on by somebody who had once more power than Connor, making Connor believe he wasn't worthy.

It was somewhat on the right track, but leaning more onto the path of eating disorders rather than racial segregation.

Tony swears, a sharp curse and Connor wisely ignores it. He guides Connor back into the chair he was sitting on before getting up to stand on a scale, and Tony takes out a rather small looking needle.

"There isn't anybody else here, you're going to be fine. It won't even hurt, you won't even feel it." He tries to console Connor, but Connor's stress levels are rising every single time Tony waves that needle around. He did not need to be discovered now. No way, not today.

He quickly stands up, his six foot frame taller than Tony, and insists he doesn't get the needle taken, ever in fact. Tony rolls his eyes and exhales rather loudly before finally setting down the needle. He places both hands in the air in the universal 'surrender'.

Connor's stress decreases from 79% down to 40%. It's an improvement, but not enough for optimal functionality. Tony tries his final tactic.

He pulls out a voice recorder.

"All you need to do is say anything you need to tell the authorities and there will be no more problems. You can be free of whatever's plaguing you." Tony's voice now has a sharp edge to it, as if he's urging Connor to press record and start speaking. He knows he can't force the kid to do it, but he'll be damned if he doesn't try.

"What are you insinuating, Dr Stark?" Connor's tone is clipped in retaliation. Tony snaps his head back around to look more directly at Connor, casually pacing around the chair.

"Oh, nothing. Maybe I just find it a little weird how your father seems to be encouraging your 'weight gain diet' yet you gain no weight? Or how he pointed a gun to you yet you 'hugged' it out? Your relationship with him seems to be… rocky at best." He stops pacing agin and realigns his posture.

"Look, kid, if there's 'anything going on' at home, I can help you. You're a great kid and I really like you, but I can't do anything unless you accept my help." Connor bites his bottom lip and stands up confident.

"Nothing. There is nothing going on. I'll be sure to notify you if anything changes." Connor grabs his suit jacked from the coat rack by the door and lets himself out. Tony doesn't bother following him.

Once Connor is out of the building, Tony talks to the ceiling, nonchalantly.

"Jarvis, did you get the scan?"

"Of course, sir."

—


	5. Chapter 5

"Pull up the results to the blood scan." Tony sighed. It seemed like this kid was getting more and more complicated than he originally thought.

But he was too emotionally invested to drop this and let it become another person's problem.

"I couldn't seem to find any blood in the scan per say, but there was a different liquid replacing what should be known as the most vital liquid produced by the body."

Tony's eyes widen in shock. Okay, so maybe he was expecting Connor to be having a lot of deficiencies in his blood because of the fact that he didn't eat, but he didn't expect Connor to lack… well, blood!

"It's a blue liquid made up of the chemical compound phosphorus as well as mercury and argon. The argon seems to be in a liquid state, even at room temperature, probably kept in that state by a stabiliser."

Something happened to this boy, his very blood was changed from that of normal blood. It didn't even seem like it was made of similar compounds that other species blue blood was made of.

How his heart survived with that kind of… blue blood pumping through it was a mystery to Tony.

"Did you get anything else?"

"No, only the blood scan, as you requested, sir."

The pieces were slowly filtering through Tony's mind, putting them together. He'd already assumed that this boy had been psychologically conditioned to believe he wasn't worthy of the food that he should have been eating on a regular basis, but put together with the blue blood - damn.

"Jesus," Tony curses. "this boy, Connor;… was he an experiment?"

And Tony wouldn't put it past Hydra.

* * *

Connor fumbled with the armband in his hands. Once he'd been approached by the shady group, they had given it to him, as a show of acceptance into their ranks.

The armband was a dark green, unlike the bright blue one he'd worn during his time in the future - 2038. On the side, the part that was meant to stick out, was the emblem of the group. A skull with six tentacles curling out underneath and a circular red background.

After a quick background search, he concludes that this organisation was involved with crime, but if that was how he was going to achieve his end goal, then so be it, but the second they were going to make Connor involved with a crime, Connor would immediately back out.

Because that is when it's officially gone too far.

He goes outside, and checks the mailbox, enclosed is a funeral invitation, to the Stacey's. A joint funeral for Gwen and her father. The funeral was scheduled for the following Monday afternoon.

Connor put in a quick note about it in his inner calendar, ignoring all the messages from Tony.

There must have been at least twelve messages, asking him to come back in. He'd answer them later, but for now marked them as read.

Connor walked out the door in his usual get-up - jeans, suit jacket, dress shirt and tie - and went to the spot their little 'squad' met up to walk to school together.

It felt oddly empty seeing their spot void of Gwen and Wendy. Peter hung his head low, looking a mess, and he smelt like he hadn't showered in days. Ned sat there, unknowing on what do to. Connor wisely kept the silence unbroken as they wordlessly started to walk towards the direction of the school.

Michelle didn't even crack up one of her sarcastic jokes.

It was just the four of them, Ned, Peter, Michelle and Connor walking a dull silence. The business of New York City finally filters in, the cars beeping and ferries honking loudly just add character to the city.

There's a lot of construction work going down, to fix the city after the mess of what happened between Spiderman and the lizard. Peter, Connor notices, has a large bandage over his left forearm, with dried caked blood visible on the outside of the bandage.

Michelle also seems to notice that.

"How did you get that?" She asks Peter, not loud or harsh, but more of a soft curiosity.

 **SCAN: OPEN_WOUND**

 **RECENTLY_BANDAGEDUNPROFESSIONALLY**

 **TRACES_OF_TETNUS**

 **NON_LETHAL**

Peter flinches and brings his arm closer to his chest.

"Some of the damage from the buildings fell on me. I was in a corner store and a metal pole scraped it." He explains, and Connor scans him, noting how his heart beats irregularly when saying this. A lie, perhaps?

Michelle nods to the lie, not showing whether or not she believed Peter, while Ned just blinked dubiously. Connor still hasn't said anything.

Connor once again receives a message from Tony, except this one is different than the others.

Since Gwen and one other person had died in the aftermath of Spiderman's fight, he automatically got the position of intern. The attached file to the message was his new work timetable.

Saturday nine to five and every weekday from four to eight. The pay was sixty dollars an hour, pretty generous, but money was something Tony had a copious amount of.

Connor's mind froze, wondering if why everything felt right. Acting like a teenager made him feel like he had more freedom than he ever had working with Cyberlife.

He didn't ponder over it for long, internally correcting himself that no, Androids were designed for a purpose and he would fulfil his purpose, he just needed to get back first.

 **SOFTWARE_INSTABILITY: ^**

* * *

Its period two when he gets another message from Tony, asking him if he could begin work right after school, which Connor immediately responds with yes, he was free to work after school.

He doesn't eat that recess either, and it's starting to look like Ned and Peter are beginning to notice his strange lack of eating. Peter takes out five dollars and passes it to Connor.

"Did you forget your lunch or something? Go buy yourself something." He tells Connor, but Connor simply passes it back, once again saying he wasn't hungry.

But Connor knew it isn't exactly that, as much as he would love to have the extra energy stores in him for later use, he just couldn't. Eating was a human act, and he wasn't human, no matter how much he looked human. He would never be on the same level as a human.

The churning of food entering his system would be enough to send him into a panic. Amanda would never be pleased if he decided to eat like a human.

He couldn't. Besides, it wasn't even his money. He couldn't take it.

Peter looks at him, in doubt but reluctantly takes his money back.

Peter and his friends are getting increasingly worried about Connor, but it isn't like they can force him to get 'better', and they didn't have all the facts. They could be severely misreading the entire situation, but Peter had a really bad feeling that Connor desperately needed their help and support.

None of them have any periods together after recess, and they don't catch the same buses after school, going their separate ways.

* * *

"Tony, whose suite are you setting up?" Steve asks, watching Tony talk with an interior designer, pointing wildly toward one wall and holding up a bunch of colour palate samples against it, growing continuously.

"Connor's." He answers, and honestly, Steve's still confused. "Hey - Steve - which do you think suits this wall better?" He holds up two colour cards against the wall opposite to the large window.

"Um, the left one," Steve says, still not quite sure what's happening. Tony nods, ignoring Steve's look of confusion and barks out 'Slategray' to the interior designer who proceeds to scribble down the order.

He then goes through a series of different carpets before just settling on a dark oak timber. A group of men already begin to arrange the room to Tony's request. A large queen bed is pushed up against a wall that is adjacent to the window, and the sheets are also grey with one small blue pillow to add a splash of colour.

A desk is being placed near the bed and has floating selves nailed into the walls, filling them with literature in both French, and English.

"Tony-" Steve is ignored, but Steve's had enough. "Tony!"

Said person now finally decided to pay attention to Steve.

"Yes?" He sighs, annoyed that Steve had stopped him from further continuing to aid the room development. The wall was already being painted and fanned to dry and the floors almost completely timbered, with somebody placing a grey rug on it.

"What are you doing - and I want a proper explanation." Steve gives Tony a stare.

"You know how Peter has a room? Well, Connor - my new intern - is getting one as well. Because I feel like he's being abused or something at his home and I want him to have a safe haven if he needs one-"

Steve exhales loudly, signalling for Tony to stop.

"Tony, you can't just… adopt a kid. Even if he is 'abused' you don't really have evidence." Steve tries to explain, and Tony just raises an eyebrow.

"Jarvis, pull up my revised file on Connor Anderson." A document projects itself in the air in front of Tony, at eye level, and Tony steps aside to bring Steve to read the document.

Steve's eyes dart across the document, and his eyes widen, not unlike Tony's own when he first found out.

"Yeah, I even wrote what I propose happened. I think he may have been… an experiment of some sort and mentally conditioned to not eat anything. Hydra is a candidate for said experimenters but we need more evidence on that."

Steve does a double take and he looks at Tony in all seriousness.

"If Hydra's involved, we could all be in big trouble. We need to investigate further, immediately." Tony looks back at Steve.

"What do you think I'm doing! I'm doing my best but we have to tread carefully if Connor's truly been psychologically conditioned." Tony says, with a chuckle trying to add light to the conversation, and if Steve's stare is anything to go by, it didn't work.

* * *

Peter bumps into Connor, surprising both of them, at the Stark Tower Foyer after school. Peter's about to ask Connor about why he's there when Connor takes out an access and taps it against the chip reader by the elevator. Peter frowns but does the same, and they both enter.

Jarvis greets them both and Peter breaks the silence.

"What are you doing here?" Peter's facial expression isn't accusing, but more surprised.

"I'm Dr Stark's new intern, and you?" Connor remains neutral and smiles at the end of the sentence. Peter frowns a little.

"I'm the… other intern." He says, almost feeling betrayed that Tony would hire another intern.

 **PETER_PARKER: STATUS_UPDATED**

 **PETER_PARKER: COLLEAGUE_AND_FRIEND**

 **SOFTWARE_INSTABILITY: ^**

"Seems we're going to be working together, then." Peter nods, not really paying attention anymore. When the elevator opens again, Peter immediately speed walks out and walks into another room, slamming the door and shooting a guilty look at Tony, who is leaning against the wall waiting for them.

"That's Peter," Tony says. He looks nervous, as if he really wants to tell Connor something, but doesn't say anything.

"I know, Dr Stark. He's in my homeroom at school." Connor clarifies the established friendship between Peter and himself. Tony nods, and motions with his hand for Connor to follow him.

Tony leads Connor down the hallway and opens the door the furthest down the hall. It's the room he was preparing for Connor. He briefly explains.

"It's a room for you, and you only. The door on that wall to the left is the walk in robe and the door to the right of that door is the bathroom. Interning with me is really random because I don't follow a schedule so you're only needed when called, or when Jarvis tells you you're needed."

"Sometime's you're going to have to work overtime but you will be compensated with the regular payment per hours of overtime. This may mean you might have to stay overnight, I'm sending the contracts to your legal guarding and a contract to you."

With that, Tony shut the door and left Connor alone in the large homey room. Connor dropped his messenger bag on the floor and took out his homework assigned to him from school. If he had nothing else to do, then he should get to doing his Italian homework.

Connor was fluent in almost every human language, it didn't take long to write his public speaking assessment on vigilantes in Italian, and he already moved onto mathematics.

Peter walked in with his own homework, asking Connor if he wanted to do it together.

"Sure."

They noticed they were doing the same sheet of mathematics, and Peter was about to grab out his scientific calculator when out of the corner of his eye, he saw Connor taking a quick glance at the paper and write all the answers down.

It was almost impossible, and Peter wouldn't have believed Connor could do it if he hadn't seen it with his own two eyes.

At first, he didn't think Connor was actually writing down the answers to the equations, and just writing random numbers and letters down, but after solving the first few, Peter realised Connor was getting them all correct.

"Hey man, how are you doing that? That is crazy?" Peter was absolutely amazed at how Connor was solving the equations, and Connor obviously couldn't tell Peter that his inner algorithms could work them out in a split second, so he decided the next best thing.

"Ha- Father sent me to mathematics camp during the Summer in Detroit."

Peter falters at that, feeling sorry that instead of an actual relaxing Summer, Connor had been sent to a maths camp.

"Aw, that sucks man, well there is always next summer. Maybe you can convince your dad to let you go to an adventure camp, or even stay here with Tony, he wouldn't mind." Peter offers.

Connor looks at Peter incredulously.

"I requested to go." He deadpans. "Dad wouldn't send me to an expensive camp just because he wants to send me off."

Peter awkwardly smiles, silently apologising for misunderstanding.

Connor forgives him immediately.

* * *

After Connor packs up and leaves to go home once his shift has ended, Tony checks the room and notices something on the floor that makes his heart stutter.

A Hydra armband.

This was definitely not there before.

"Jarvis, tell Rogers we may have confirmed our theory."


	6. Chapter 6

"It can't be a coincidence." Tony rubs the bridge of his nose.

"It doesn't prove much or really anything for that matter. Hydra is a well known public enemy, he could just be fooling around like many other kids do with other organisations such as the Illuminati and such." Natasha regards the rest of the team carefully.

Peter's just unbelieving.

"I refuse to believe Connor takes company with terrorists. There's another explanation, he's too genuine for this." Peter throws down his homework, along with another sheet, Connor's homework.

"Look at it." Tony takes the sheets into his hands.

"Is this your homework sheet… and your answer sheet?" Peter shakes his head.

"No… one is mine and the other's is Connor's. Don't you notice anything strange about it?" Natasha swipes the sheet out of Tony's hands to look at it herself and furrows her eyebrows.

"It looks… printed, he doesn't have any unique style of writing, this just looks like it's been typed." Peter nods and points out another variable.

"You see this? There's no working out. I watched him do this myself, he just glanced at it and wrote down the answer, even the parts where you had to measure with a ruler! Everything is correct, the way he did it seemed so… mechanical."

Hawkeye yawns, loudly.

"Look, if it doesn't concern me I'll just be off… I don't know why you called the entire Avengers down for a meeting like this." Just as Hawkeye was about to get up Steve grabbed his shoulder.

"Look, this should concern us, Jarvis, pull up the file on Connor Anderson." Once the file was out and in the open, everybody had a look at the revised facts and what Tony had discovered so far about the boy.

"Blue… blood? The only other humanoid species I know of with blue blood are frost giants, which also have blue skin." Thor comments, now frowning with the rest of the group.

"We can't just say somebody is in the Illuminati because they possess a dollar bill. This could just be a trivial act of teenage rebellion." Natasha tried to salvage the most out of this situation. This wasn't looking good for them… or the boy.

"Even then, this certainly means we should be keeping a closer eye on the boy, Connor." Steve uncrosses his arms, looking far older than his years for once.

"If our theory follows, that means Connor really is an experiment of Hydra, possibly being abused by his 'father', who has no family resemblance by the way and has been psychologically conditioned to not eat anything. As far as we know, this poor boy has never had a bite to eat in his life, and has only been kept alive by artificially inserted nutrients."

Tony stresses his words toward the end, to try and get a harsher response from his teammates. Peter looks positively nauseous, as he himself, a superpower growing teenaged boy, ate up to twelve meals a day to keep himself from passing out, and just the thought of not having enough to eat was terrifying.

* * *

Connor doesn't dress up for the occasion, except instead of jeans he wears a pair of black slacks. The black umbrella is held up firmly above his head, and the rain makes the scene feel like a huge… cliche.

Everybody is huddled together as they watch the burial of the two caskets. Gwen and George Stacy. Even though Connor knew Peter was invited, he couldn't seem to find him, anywhere.

Nobody commented on it either.

The affair was short, and many words of comfort were given to the brothers of Gwen and her mother. Connor almost felt something inside him shift when there was the proposed moment of silence.

Almost.

 **SOFTWARE_INSTABILITY: ^**

The priest ended the session and everybody was dismissed.

Connor paused to say something to Gwen's mother, who had tears running down her cheeks.

"I offer my deepest condolences." He nods and tightens his mouth before walking toward the street behind the graveyard, spotting Peter sitting on the ledge of a building.

Peter didn't seem to notice him but was swinging his legs wildly, clear tear streaks dripping down his cheeks. Connor decided to take the fire escape to get onto the roof to stand behind where Peter was. If Peter noticed him, he wasn't acknowledged.

"I didn't see you at the funeral," Connor says plainly, not asking why Peter's sitting at the edge of a New York townhouse apartment. Peter just sniffles and hiccups into his hands, burring his face in shame.

"I didn't deserve to be there. How could I? I couldn't save her…" Peter's shivering and Connor takes note that he's only in loose pants and a t-shirt. He takes the scarf from around his neck and wraps it around Peter's neck, bringing the umbrella closer to keep them both from the harsh rain.

"What could you have possibly done to save her?" Connor questions, he doesn't quite understand why Peter's in such a mood to be blaming himself for Gwen's death, who, according to Connor's current databases, is completely unrelated to Peter in every way.

"Connor… It's because I'm Spiderman!"

 **PETER_PARKER: STATUS_UPDATE**

 **PETER_PARKER: COLLEAGUE_FRIEND_VIGILANTE**

Connor blinks. There is no protocol in his programming to emit a specific response to the current situation that Peter had just revealed to put them in, making Connor feel, or stimulate, feelings of awkwardness.

"The vigilante?" He refers, making sure it isn't just some cosplay ritual that Peter is referring to. Peter nods, looking way ashamed. "That's where you got your injury from, the other day at school?" Once again Peter nods but returns to crying.

Connor does a scan once more and notices the abrasions on Peter's arm sync up with the ones Spiderman would have obtained when fighting Dr Connors, or the lizard when the city had major damage done.

Connor puts a hand down on Peter's shoulder, who flinches at the contact and Connor notices the bruise on his shoulder.

 **COURSE: LIE_/_TRUTH**

 **COURSE_CHOSEN: LIE**

"I would've done the same."

 **SOFTWARE_INSTABILITY: /\**

It's a lie, and they both know it. Connor would've done better, he would've calculated the problems and probability of success and wouldn't take emotionally driven risks.

He was a machine, after all.

* * *

Hydra had approached him, once more. He'd been given an access card to a subsidiary government-run organisation called 'S.H.I.E.L.D.' It was a legitimate access card, with level two access. They'd encoded him into the system, as apparently they had already infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. and acted as a shadow organisation within it. Controlling all their decisions from the inside.

A majority of the agents in S.H.I.E.L.D. had already been converted to work for Hydra and had been informed of his status. It was alarming how easy he got into the main building to access the archives.

Nobody gave him a second glance, as long as he got past security and had an identification badge on he they didn't raise any questions at his presence, most of them haven't actually seen him before.

Except for one Clint Barton who was at the coffee machine when Connor walked through the main lounge area. Clint looked over to Agent Hill.

"Isn't he a little young, to be working here?"

Agent Hill regards him cooly and looks back toward the tablet she's on.

"We have sleeper agents as young as six years old here. I think a 17-year-old is fine." Clint shrugs his shoulders.

"I don't know… he just looks a little familiar to me. It doesn't feel right. Can't remember where I know him from…" He does take a look at Connor's beanie and mumbles about how they weren't being as strict with the dress code these days. He doesn't take any more notice of it, assuming that he'd seen Connor around the streets of New York City sometime.

Connor gets a message through his earpiece, telling him to go to the training area, to get tested on his current ability. At the shooting range in the far end of the room, Connor sees an eight-year-old girl shoot, and she gets most of the fatal points of the training dummy. Her handler smiles and gives her a scratch and sniff sticker.

First, it was the practical test, and Connor's new assigned handler had trouble keeping up with Connor who excelled in every aspect. They took him to a large treadmill and made sure he could run at a high speed for at least ninety minutes.

They had him shoot multiple moving and still targets from different lengths, which wasn't hard for him to shoot. Everything was running smoothly, just as Connor had expected everything too.

It was in his very programming after all.

 **SOFTWARE_INSTABILITY: \/**

* * *

There was a simulated heist for Connor to pass to confirm an official ranking ability wise.

In the simulation Connor handled everything as expected, eliminating all possible threats, with obtaining vital information before they died first. When one culprit seemed to make a run for it, Connor took after them, even when they got into the busy side of the city.

Connor evaded the obstacles around him, sometimes even using it to his advantage and the chase seemed to become rooftop orientated, and eventually, Connor cornered it when there was no more rooftop to run and the next roof was too far away to even attempt to jump too.

Quickly, with practised precision, the culprit began to fight back, and Connor started to fight with him, and they were both fighting for the gun, the culprit was too slow and Connor had grabbed it first, but he had Connor in a chokehold. Connor aimed the gun to the side of his head and tried to shoot behind him, attempting to shoot down the offender.

Eventually, he gave up and shot through his abdomen to shoot to the offender. The offender was in shock, but the shot was nonfatal. Using the offender's shock to his own advantage, Connor shot him in the head.

He left the simulation with a perfect score, which had only once been done before, by Natalie Romanova.

His face displayed no emotion when his shocked handler informed him that he had gained perfect marks, outperforming most people who had taken the simulation.

His physical capability rank was high, and now the written test had to be taken.

The test was only a few pages long and designed to trick you. Connor had answered with exactly the answers that handler wanted him to have. He was showing excellent potential, and he already mentioned that he was an Intern to the one and only, Dr Anthony Stark, which boosted his value as a sleeper agent.

Shield (or rather Hydra) looked at his results and didn't think for a second that they need to train him. He was already the perfect agent.

 **SOFTWARE_INSTABILITY: \/**

* * *

It was the following Saturday when Tony had approached him, requesting a private audience with him in his grand office, on the top floor of his tower. Connor didn't seem to find anything odd about the request and arrived promptly at Tony's office without much delay.

"You requested my presence, Doctor?" Connor isn't asking for the reason he's been sent up here, but it's definitely implied and Tony can tell just by the tone of Connor's voice, which is usually flat and unemotional.

"Um, yes. I'd like to ask you what this is." He opens a drawer, the second one down to the right of his desk, Connor notes and takes out the Hydra armband. Connor inwardly swears but shows no outward discomfort with seeing the familiar armband being held by Tony.

Leaving the armband behind must have been an unforeseen malfunction in his programming, a side effect of being away from a Cyberlife repair plant for an extended period of time, Connor speculates.

"Of course," Connor opens his suit jacket, and from the inner pocket he retrieves an identification badge, and explains calmly.

"I am a sleeper agent." Tony furrows his eyebrows, and takes the badge from Connor's hand, eyeing it with almost disgust.

"Shield? Why would you go with them?" Tony's lips curl in a malice like state. Connor takes notice and once again pauses to analyse Tony, not that Tony can tell. It's like Connor froze time and looks over Tony. His heart is beating erratically. Panic, perhaps?

"My father does work for the government." It's not exactly an answer, but it Tony takes it as one.

Tony passes back the badge to Connor.

"Look, is anybody… making you do this?" Tony asks, and Connor waits just a few seconds too long to answer and Tony continues talking as if that was an answer enough. "We can help you, and frankly I'm disgusted that it's Shield who has you. You are dismissed."

Once Connor leaves, Tony takes the luxury of talking to Jarvis again.

"Update his file, you heard what he said."

* * *

It's a hard blow to the side of his head that catches him off guard.

 **⅄ ‾ ‾ ‾ :WɹƖɟN0Ɔ**

 **N/⅄**

 **uoƖʇɐɹqƖ˥ɐɔƐɹ :pƐpNƐɯɯ0ɔƐɹ**

 **ʇNɐld‾ɹᴉ∀Ԁǝɹ‾ǝℲƖ˥ɹƎq⅄ɔ‾ʇsƎɹ∀Ɛu‾ƐHʇ Oʇ‾ʇɹ0ԀƎɹ :ɹoɹɹƎ**

He waits a few seconds and the overwhelming amount of errors and warnings that filtered across his vision subdued, and Connor can now process the strange sticky substance against the side of his face.

The bonds are hard to break but within a few shakes of his left arm with immense pressure, they tear. Connor looks in the direction it came from, one Peter Parker is standing there mortified.

"I'm so sorry! I was practising and it accidentally went off!" He looks apologetic but once he realises that Connor had torn through his webbing he's perplexed. He hadn't taken Connor for a super strong person.

Maybe the blue blood mentioned earlier had something to do with it. Peter was practically dying with curiosity about Connor's blue blood and the properties it held, but he couldn't outright ask Connor, Connor didn't know that anybody knew yet.

Or maybe he did and Connor was playing the role of the fool.


	7. Chapter 7

"You're a disappointment, Connor," Amanda says, with disdain dripping from her voice. "I've anticipated that you would've gotten back by now." Connor shows no reaction but does feel shame in him.

"Perhaps Cyberlife needs to replace me, all this is just a hindrance to the investigation. I can simply upload my memory to the Cyberlife data cloud." Connor agreed, slightly goading Amanda.

"You and I both know that you cannot do that unless that… 'portal' is open. Only then would you establish a proper connection to pass on the information your model has collected so we could replace you." Amanda sat down on the rowboat in the river of the zen garden.

Connor began rowing.

"Of course, Amanda. My mission is too important to think about the variables. My primary function is to investigate and hunt deviants."

 **SOFTWARE_INSTABILITY: \/**

* * *

"…he's waking up." Connor filters his eyes open, he must've unwillingly initiated a reboot program after that blow to his head. He remembers speaking with Amanda in his mind palace, and he remembers being reminded of his primary function.

Connor sits up and notices he's on the floor of the hall where Peter had managed to shoot him in the head with some kind of web substance. By the look of it, when Connor fell down after initiating a reboot, he landed on his arm which severely worried some people.

"Oh my God! Your arm is all bent and twisted!" Peter calls out worried. Connor looks at his arm and snaps it back into the correct rotation and remould his arm to bend it back into shape.

"It's fine." He says, getting up with a steady posture as if he didn't just faint a second before. He straightens his tie.

"We have health cover you know, you can get that x-rayed." Connor turns him down on that.

"You are exposed to an extra 0.7 micro-sieverts of ionising radiation in an x-ray, besides there is no need, I am functioning perfectly fine." Connor flings around his coin from his pocket with ease, performing tricks that Tony and Peter could only dream of performing.

Well, Tony maybe, but with enough practise and aid from his spider reflexes, Peter may be able to master the coin tricks. He tosses the coin back and forth while catching it by its edges with his index and middle finger.

It spins as he passes it back and forth along the tips of his fingers. Tony looks doubtful but doesn't force Connor to do anything he doesn't want to do. He would continue trying something else.

"Who's hungry? I had my chefs set up a feast, let's go! everybody to the dining room!" Tony immediately exits forcing them to have no choice but to go out to the dining room. In there, Peter and Connor notice that the entirety of the Avengers are already there, waiting for them to take their respective assigned seats around the circular table.

Most of them are in something formal, and Peter feels out of place in his T-shirt and jeans. Even Connor's wearing something nice, although he usually wears nice and socially acceptable clothing anyway.

Connor didn't really seem to have a taste in clothing, just more of a set of rules or a guideline on what to wear.

Everybody started to dig in. All except Connor.

"Whats wrong?" Says Peter through mouthfuls of mashed potato. Connor doesn't say much but does reluctantly start to pile an assortment of different foods on his plate, most of it are foods that are considered only to be eaten by those on a diet. He takes a lot of the salad and a few oysters.

He cuts everything into small pieces and when he places one of the carefully proportioned pieces into his mouth, he chews fifteen times before swallowing slowly. It's three bites in the potato salad when he abruptly stands up and rushes over to the bathroom. A retching can be heard and then a flush.

He doesn't bother returning to the feast.

* * *

The heavy feeling in Connor's stomach cavity doesn't go away after he's thrown up, and Connor can just feel Amanda's disappointment in him. He's done something much too… human. It's not right.

When he arrives back home, he's just so frustrated with everything. He tears his beanie off his head and throws it away. He never wants to see it again, it feels filthy and it feels wrong. It feels wrong to hide who he is. He want's to tell the people, who he has come to care about, who he really is, but he just can't.

He want's to tear the LED right out of his skull. He can feel Amanda in his head. He wants to do everything at all but he also wants to do nothing because what exactly is the point of this all?

He was replaceable. There were probably lines and lines of his model just waiting to be replaced. Sure, it may cost a small fortune but he could be replaced at absolutely any time.

Hank, Connor realised. Hank was the irreplaceable variable. Hank was the top lieutenant that the Detroit Police department had to offer.

If he couldn't fulfil his purpose of hunting down deviants, he'll be damned if he doesn't get Hank back.


	8. Chapter 8

Peter didn't know if he could keep this up. There was just… so much of it. He had stumbled into the kitchen one morning, around two in the afternoon, already much too late to even think about going to school. Why didn't Aunt May wake him up this morning before she left for work so he had time to get ready like usual?

There was a heavy feeling setting in his stomach. Gently he made his way to his Aunt's room.

"May?" He softly knocked on the door, pressing his ears against the thin wood to try to determine if the shower was on. It wasn't. He did hear the humming and buzzing of the busy New York City traffic. He felt the cool draft come in through the room, and brush against his feet from the crevice underneath the door.

That wasn't right, Aunt May never slept with the window open. Peter opens the door with an urgency. His first instinct is to gag, as a putrid smell of rotting meat wafts into his nasal cavity.

It's got a tinge of sickening sweet cheap perfume to it, and that's when he notices it. The natural stillness of his Aunt and all the variables in the room reconstruct itself into a scene replaying in Peter's mind.

The broken glass on the window seems to be the cause of the draft and a telltale sign of a break-in. There was obvious resistance, and in May's body, there's a knife in her hand. It's stained with dried crusty blood. From where he stood, he could see the gaping wound, the bruises around her neck.

Peter steps out of the room, it's more than he can handle. Why did it always happen to him? There's a knock at the door, and when Peter doesn't answer, they try again. This goes again for a few minutes and whoever it was decided to let themselves in. It's the police.

"One May Parker didn't show up for her six forty-five shift without notice and a Peter Parker never went to school this morning- hey kid, you alright?" The police officer notices Peter sprawled out in the middle of the kitchen, unmoving, un-comprehensive.

The officer can detect something off, and immediately does a quick check through the entire flat. The officer notices the body quickly and immediately looks down at Peter apologetically. She looks down into her radio.

"Code 70 D.O.A. Queens, corner of 90th and 104th ave." She slowly ushers Peter out, gently. She sits him on the front steps of the townhouse flat and gives him a fresh bottle of water, and a croissant. Two more police cars approach his residence, and Peter still hasn't said a word.

Hank steps out of the police car he's been assigned to, and his eyes look downcast, grumbling about homicides. He immediately notices the teenage Peter.

"Parker? Is that you? Your friends with Connor, right?" This is what snaps Peter out. A mention of his life that doesn't revolve around Aunt May.

"Y-yes, how'd you know it was me?" Peter stutters, eyes extremely close to watering. His nose burns up at the tip and he just can't stop himself from crying.

"Uh, a photo." Lieutenant Anderson responds to Peter. Funny, Peter doesn't remember any photos being taken by Connor, maybe Connor was one of those sneaky Instagram people who managed to take photos in class somehow without the teacher noticing at all. It didn't really matter right now, nothing really mattered.

Hank made some kind of signal to the other officers, which Peter was too downcast to see, and took him back to the station. There wasn't really anywhere to put Peter, as they didn't know his involvement in the crime that had taken place at the Parker residence, so they just sat him down in one of the many interrogation rooms.

Peter was still in his pyjamas, but nobody took any notice or gave him any looks besides apologetic ones of pity. Figuring that Peter needed some comfort of some sort, Hank ordered an Uber-eats McDonalds happy meal and called the school which Connor went to, had him excused from classes from the rest of the day due to official Police business.

It only took Connor seven minutes to sprint down from the school which was three kilometres from the police station. He didn't look puffed in the slightest and immediately took a seat next to Peter once he located him.

First, he was confused on why Hank would ask him, an android who wasn't designed with emotions in his system, but then Connor realised that integration within human society was one the things he was programmed with. He could simulate emotions in his program.

Peter leaned up against Connor and cried softly into the crook of his neck. Connor placed one arm around him while using the other arm to place a shock blanket around Peters' shoulders. Connor then rubbed comforting circles into Peters back in a soothing manner.

It wasn't his primary function, but treating victims of crime to help them calm down from their shock was a function he could perform. Connor shut his eyes and began browsing through Peter's legal folder. After finding that Peter has accumulated a sensory disorder which led to sensory overloads Connor knew that Peter must have been sleeping with earplugs to block out the average noises a person would be exposed to during the time they slept.

 **INFORMATION_ADDED: VICTIM_DIDN'T_HEAR_CRIME_?**

Hank must have contacted the secondary emergency contact in Peter's file and said person had just walked through the door. Tony Stark walked into the interrogation room, and Connor stoop up to leave, but before he did, he looked through the SWAT supplies, and 'borrowed' a pair of noise cancelling earplugs they had for practise shoots and dropped them in Tony's hands.

He wanted a look at the crime scene.

* * *

Hank knew exactly what Connor wanted when he saw him take a seat in the backseat of the police car, and Hank wordlessly took him to the crime scene.

The officer in charge of the crime scene took one look at Hank bringing Connor onto the crime scene and shook her head.

"Lieutenant Anderson… you can't. Not only is your son a civilian, he's underage." She gave Connor a look. Hank groaned but pleaded.

"Just let him do his thing, I promise he's a prodigy." She rolled her eyes, but from the lack of evidence they had gathered from the crime scene already, she relented.

"Five minutes, and if he hasn't gotten anything this is going to the chief." Hank nodded, and walked through, the woman gave Connor a look that clearly said 'Don't fuck up the crime scene'.

Connor took a look around the bedroom, and Hank had to suppress a flinch from the smell of it alone. He scanned around the body.

 **WEAPON_LIKELY_USED: MAC_MTH-80_PROFESSIONAL_SERIES _8-INCH_STAINLESS_STEEL**

 **WOUND: FATAL_ABDOMINAL_WOUNDNOT_CAUSE_OF_DEATH**

 **BRUISES_AROUND_NECK: STRANGULATIONCASE_OF_DEATH**

He bent down and sampled some of her blood, bringing two fingers up to his mouth to brush against his tongue.

 **BLOOD: 7+_HOURS_OLD**

 **TIME_OF_DEATH: 0437**

He then looked at the shattered window. It was broken from the outside. He had found the point of entry, but not the exit point yet. With the amount of blood sprayed around the room, there must have been some residue of blood left on the offender.

He reconstructed what went down, and the offender had obviously been here for a harmless theft, looking at the drawer that was open and messily rummaged through.

 **PLANNED_THEFT**

 **DECEASED_VICTIM_AWOKE**

 **THEIF_ASSAULTED_DECEASED_VICTIM_WITH_KNIFE**

 **DECEASED_VICTIM_REMOVED_KNIFE**

 **CALLED_FOR_HELP_?**

 **STRANGULATED_TO_DEATH**

Connor left to examine Peter's room, and if the woman was serious about only giving him five minutes, he only had a minute left. Another scan around the room gave him enough information.

Peter had obviously come into his room last night through his window, and it seems like his watch fell off in the process, falling onto the groundbreaking, freezing the exact time he had returned home, which according to the broken clock face of his watch now discarded into his bin was around two nineteen am.

The set of noise-cancelling headphones Peter had on his bed probably meant he went to sleep with them, by his medical history given that he has a past with sensory overloads, probably because of the suddenly gained 'spider-sense'.

 **DETERMINED: VICTIM_DID_NOT_HEAR_CRIME**

There were images of May Parker, her deceased husband and Peter on the wall in frames.

 **VICTIM_WAS_CLOSE_TO_THE_DECEASED_WOMAN**

"Time's up! What you got?" The woman came in and looked at Connor expectantly. Connor spewed off the facts that he had, and the woman noted them.

"Still, didn't tell us where they went." Connor thought for a moment, using all the evidence he had gathered to come to a plausible conclusion.

"It isn't likely they left the same way they came in, maybe they left through another window, but made sure to close it, although that amount of copious blood would have left a residue on the offender. Perhaps there has been an accomplice to clean up after the offender… or that they're still here."

The woman scoffed but wrote down everything that Connor had told her anyway. Connor straightened his tie and left the apartment, with Hank.

* * *

"She's dead. She's gone. I've got nowhere to go!" Peter was panicking, curled up in a ball in his closet at the Avenger's Tower. Tony was trying to coax him out, to get him to do something, anything to take his mind off of what had taken place earlier that morning.

He sighed. "I know buddy,"

"I wasn't that much older than you when I lost my parents. My father… I didn't really miss him, he was a bit of a dick, but oh dear lord, my mother was an angel." He kept on talking, and that seemed to soothe Peter down a little even though he wasn't really listening, just the quiet voice of Tony talking took his mind off quite a bit of it.

"I missed my mother heaps. She was almost like my only parent, then when she left I had nobody. Peter, you have us, we can be your family. We're never going to replace the thing you and May had going on, but we can support you your entire journey." Tony really did mean it when he said he would support Peter.

Peter was like a son to him.

His poor son who had just had a mother taken away from him. He thanked the Gods that Connor was there to comfort Peter before he could drop the meeting he was in when he got the call. Come to think of it, where did Connor go after he had arrived? Tony could definitely use some of the help that Connor, as a friend of Peter, could provide.

That wasn't the only thing he wanted from Connor.

Nothing would satiate his burning curiosity to know more about the kind boy.


	9. Chapter 9

"Hey kid, you all right?" Tony says, a coffee in one hand and his arm around Peter. He's just heard about how Connor was one of the ones who helped gather the many clues around the crime scene at Peter's Aunt May's place.

Connor shrugs, a human notion of being nonchalant in many cases. It isn't the first deceased body he's seen, and Connor knows it won't be his last. Tony furrows his eyebrows behind his sunglasses, worried about the two people who he has come to care about, almost like an eccentric uncle.

Connor doesn't comment but eyes the menu. They're sitting in a little doughnut cafe that Tony decided to take the two boys to, so they could all bond a little, and maybe even lighten up Peter's downcast mood, even if it is just a little.

Grief was normal, but it's been a few months now since May has died, and Peter has moved in with him. The details of the crime scene were now public, but the person responsible for the crime has not been apprehended or found yet, despite Connor's efforts.

Connor hardly spends any time at the internship program anymore, every spare waking minute he's at the police station downtown, looking over the evidence, finding anything they could have missed. Anything at all.

Tony's looked at some of the footage behind Connor sifting through the evidence, and he was both disappointed and impressed. Disappointed that Connor had somehow stayed up for 72 hours straight without going to his home even once, just cycling through a routine of school then time at the station.

Tony's impressed that he's managed to function that long with neglecting that much of his own needs, Connor was a growing teenage boy, after all. It wasn't healthy.

He had no choice to pull Connor away from his self-appointed police work for an afternoon. They all deserved a small holiday, but all he Connor allowed him to do was just take him to a corner doughnut store, close enough to the station that he could bolt if any new leads came up.

Tony didn't tell him that he had deactivated Connor's phone temporarily. They didn't need distractions. This was a time for relaxation.

He watches Connors eyes flitter across the pastel green menu in his hands.

"Found something you like?" Tony teases, although it's in a vain attempt to bring the sound of Connor's laughter. It doesn't work, but in all seriousness, Tony is one hundred per cent prepared to pay for whatever doughnut Connor wants. He deserves it.

Tony doesn't wait for whatever Connor says, and orders three of their doughnuts from the 'Today's Special' subsection of the menu and a family serving of french fries. The waitress smiles and scribbles down their order in a neat script. She walks into the kitchen and a foreign language is yelled out, a loud conversation between the employees of the cafe.

It's only seven minutes later and the food that Tony ordered is served, the french fries in a large bowl that is centred, and each person gets a generously sized doughnut placed in front of them, on a saucer that would typically be used for serving tea.

The doughnut is large, almost as large as a typical burger. The frosting is a strawberry flavour, and sprinkles are pressed into one half of the frosting, leaving the other side plain. A quick scan from Connor indicates that the doughnut is indeed not adequate to be part of a healthy person's diet, in any circumstance, ever.

Tony starts eating the doughnut regardless of the copious amount of saturated fat and sugars that the doughnut contains. He either doesn't notice or doesn't care. Even Peter's reluctantly eating but Connor doesn't move his hands. Instead, when the waitress comes back around, he flags her down and asks for the doughnut to be placed in a takeout box or bag.

She readily complies, smiling happily as she brings the plate back in. She returns a few seconds later with a white takeout box, presumably casing the doughnut, and tells him to enjoy the doughnut where ever he's going to take it. He smiles, avoiding eye contact with Tony who he can tell is now staring with concern at him.

Tony decides he's had enough, and he tells Connor exactly what he thinks on the matter.

"Connor… I've been keeping a close eye on you, and if I'm not wrong, you haven't consumed since last week, Friday. Even that was just your weird diet juice!" Connor looks down towards his hands which currently rest on his lap. He looks ashamed, and he almost feels ashamed.

But that's impossible. Android's can't feel anything, right?

He now understands. He's not human enough and now Tony's confused. Maybe even disappointed. Has Connor disappointed Tony? He can't tell but the stare he's receiving from Peter and Tony practically confirms it. He'll try better. He could eat, he could simulate human acts.

He could definitely do this. Integrating with humans was one of his main functionalities, and if he failed that then not only has he failed Tony by not being human enough for Tony to like him, but he's also failed Amanda by failing to execute one of his primary programs.

The looming threat of being shut down always rests on his shoulders every time he goes to speak with Amanda. He knows he should feel honoured to have his very own personal connection with Cyberlife, unlike older models of android's who had to repeatedly report back manually, but he can't help but feel scrutinised every single time. He can't help but feel judged.

Like they're examining every one of his flaws, writing it down so they know where they went wrong, and what they should leave out of their next RK model.

Connor already knows about the RK900 project going underway. He already knows he's going to be deemed obsolete and replaced, in a matter of months even. He should have accepted his fate already, instead he feels betrayed and expendable.

It's not like that was wrong though. Every time he was damaged, he could be replaced just as easily, only with a few memories lost in sacrifice to the transporting of his cloud data process.

The only reason that he even had to be careful and mindful of his own mortality right now was that there was no access to a cyberlife plant. If he was damaged or destroyed, he wouldn't be as effective in getting hank to return.

He wouldn't be reckless, he couldn't afford to. Hank's life was on the line here.

"I'll… have a drink. Just apple juice would be fine." Connor see's the grimace upon Tony's lips, but he relents and orders an apple juice for Connor and a soda for Peter and himself.

Connor knows that he won't have any trouble taking in the Apple juice, it would cool his systems just as fine as water would, but no energy power would be converted from the calories inside of it.

If he was going to consume something, it better be useful to him, either that or really low maintenance to take out of his body, or vessel, if you will. The amber liquid smoothly went down his throat. Without warning, Tony yanks the beanie off of Connor's head and is taken aback when instead of a nasty scar that Connor could have been trying to hide or something of the sort, there's a jarring LED in his temple.

It's circular and was a light blue colour, then it was yellow for a split second before flashing red for a few seconds. It returns to the soft yellow colour, whirring silently. Connor sighs, he knew this day would come.

Tony tries to speak, but no sound comes out of his mouth when he gestures wildly to Connor's head where the LED is situated. Peter just stares at him, unblinking. He doesn't know how to react and decides just to resume eating his doughnut.

"It's an LED that tells them what I'm thinking… how I'm going. It transmits signals coming from my… brain in a certain colour." Connor tries to keep as close to the truth as possible, but to maintain his cover, a few things must be changed.

Immediately Tony picks up on his vague use of the pronoun 'they'.

"Who is 'they'?" Connor shakes his head, almost in response.

"It doesn't matter. They can't get to me now." His voice isn't solemn as Tony would expect it to be. It's a voice that knows it's just stating a fact that it can't change.

Tony's mind immediately goes back to thinking about the fall of Hydra. Maybe that's what Connor was referencing to when he said that they couldn't get to him anymore. It doesn't really matter, just that more and more was being uncovered about exactly who and what Connor was.

Connor snatches back the beanie that Tony had decided to take off his head and repositioned it back on himself. He walked grasped the takeout box holding the doughnut and left the shop.

The police may have a new lead.

* * *

When Connor walks into the flat, the small object on the table is the first thing he notices. It's a hard drive with a small inconspicuous hydra logo on the side, with the motto written in Russian.

He picks up the drive and inserts it into the computer that was distributed to him by Hydra. On the drive, it reads that they had worked for him. He's going to be part of a local transport Hydra team to handle the transport of Loki's sceptre from the local SHIELD facility to a Hydra one.

This would be the perfect time to get hands-on time with the mind stone which was situated inside the sceptre, which was also related to the tesseract. Everything was beginning to come together nicely in Connor's own opinion.

In a matter of months, he speculates, the final play of actions to be executed in which he can finally have Hank safely returned to their own world, and to their own time.

He sends a message of confirmation to his main Hydra handler. There's an extra sidetone that this is going to be a mission that is also going to incorporate Hydra's most valued asset. The Winter Solider. Their own personal assassin.

It's only one of the first missions of many, in preparation to the final game plan. To cleanse the world of any potential threats utilising the Helicarriers then rebuild the world anew from its former ashes.

It's not a plan that Connor wants to exactly be a part of, but right now this worlds safety wasn't his priority. His priority was to make sure Hank got home. As long as his programming was set for him to put his mission above all else, nothing would stop him from completing his goal.


	10. Chapter 10

**WARNING!**

 **There are graphic descriptions of self-harm in this chapter. If you do not want to read this chapter, skip to the notes at the end, and I'll summarise what happened.**

 **WARNING!**

* * *

There was that anger, again. It wasn't the sort that made you mad with rage, that you wanted to tear something apart. It was the sort where you begged yourself to understand. To know exactly why. Anything to tell yourself that from this moment onward everything would be fine. Peter allowed his anguish to bottle up inside himself, too tired to let it all out or seek somebody to talk to.

His breathing came in short, ragged breaths. Quick and fast, but every breath was an effort. All too soon he was gasping. He knew he was breathing, but none of it seemed to be getting to his head, his vision darkening and comprehension fading by the minute.

He wanted answers, but they never came. Always the 'These things happen, kid.' or the 'We'll always be here.' but never the answer. Never the reason. Maybe God had finally decided that he didn't deserve what little solace he had found in his life. He was choking on his own tears, but the pain of his own hands pulling at his hair was enough to ground him.

Every fibre of his being screamed at him to stop, and maybe even run away from it all, but nothing inside him told him that it would be okay. That nothing that changed mattered and he could continue living happily.

His new room felt disgusting to look at. Everything orderly, everything the same. Neat and peaceful, but Peter knew that wasn't how it was supposed to be. It wasn't supposed to be neat. It wasn't supposed to be orderly and it sure as hell wasn't supposed to be giving that calm aura.

His first hand experience in life had taught him enough. Nothing was supposed to be correct. Peter found himself tearing it all apart, he didn't want to look at it. Peter got to his knees and destroyed it all. The vase was thrown across the room, shattering, the bedsheets were torn of the bed and shredded.

He didn't want to see everything perfect because not everything was perfect. If everything was perfect than he'd still have his loving Aunt May… that didn't deserve to go, that was supposed to live a long and peaceful life.

Before he realised exactly what he was doing, the room had been torn up to shreds. The bed looked like a chainsaw had been through it, the books were now in more pieces than he could care to count. Looking over his abrupt handiwork, the satisfaction of destroying it all slowly flittered through Peter's heart and mind.

He suddenly felt strong again, like he could do anything, and if he could, he'd do it all again. As quick as it comes, the satisfaction inside him leaves. It was only momentary but those few seconds were heavenly to Peter, maybe even a euphoric change to his usually depressed like state.

He wants it back, and he'd do anything. He doesn't want order, he wants the control and satisfaction it gave him. He wants a grasp of everything he can't have. He yearns for the feeling, the momentary high he got. It wasn't much to look back on but at the time, everything felt right.

A razor. He has a razor in the bathroom. His right judgement leaves him as all he can think about is achieving that heavenly feel. He's sitting on the edge of the torn up bed, and waits for the temporary cloud fogging his thought process to clear, even just a little.

Peter almost runs to the walk in bathroom, stumbling along the way as if he's lost his own balance. He tears open the cupboard doors, almost off their hinges, and he frantically looks for a razor, his vision swims when he finally gets hold of it.

It's stuck in the handle, and his intuition isn't even there anymore, replaced by the gnawing in his stomach. He fumbles around, impatient and the blade finally breaks free from the handle. With the hand he used to mangle it out, he grasps it, feeling the adrenaline run back through his veins as his mind looks at it greedily.

The hand that tore out the blade is already bleeding and covered in blood, as the fight with the handle of the razor was not a pretty, or a patient one. Peter props himself back up against the bathroom wall. His entire frame is shaking, and the weight makes it hard for him to hold himself up. He can't stop the shuddering like appearance it gives him.

He just wants everything orderly to be gone, everything resembling peace to be out of his sight. He just wants to yell at somebody, to see if they can even compare themselves to the pain and anguish he feels. He just wants-

Suddenly, everything stops. Time stops and Peter makes the first cut. One deliberate and intricate motion later and a thin red line soon appears on his left wrist and clarity slowly returns to him. The moment doesn't last much longer, so he puts forth the blade again for another cut as to refresh the feeling. Then another, and then another, then another. He doesn't know how much more he does, but when he looks back down, it makes him fill up with anxiety and dread.

Looking down at his wrist, noticing that its become what he's been trying to avoid. It becomes orderly. The lines are too straight, too perfect, too even and too spaced out. It doesn't look like a mess, it looks deliberate. It looks thought out and planned. But that was a lie. It wasn't thought out and planned. It was a spur of the moment decision and if there's one thing Peter hates more than lying was an illusion.

His left wrist was just an illusion of order, when in fact, Peter felt far from it. The order in his wrist begs him to stop. Inwardly, something in Peter's mind told him that this was madness, that cutting open his wrist for the blood to spurt out and pool on the surface of his skin. The voice told him that this was insane, but everything else inside of Peter told him to continue.

So he did. This time, he didn't use the deliberate and delicate motions like before but rapidly brought forth the blade down against his skin, no moment of hesitation. Just seeing the neat lines turn into a mutilated patch of bloody skin was placating to his senses.

He seems to forget everything and just sits there in the silence. Peter thinks back on everything and nothing at all. He's so concentrated, yet if you asked him what he was thinking about, he wouldn't know where to start.

A piercing pain makes the clarity return, and he's snapped out of the tranquil state. Looking back at his arm, it makes him feel disgusting. The blood isn't a beautiful red, anymore. It was now an angry red. Not that it had changed colour, it was more of Peter shifting his perspective.

It's dripping down his arm, and onto the floor. Clean white tiles now tainted in his own blood, thickly dropping slowly. It's in a morbid like curiosity that he watches it trickle down, now focusing on the drip rather than the stinging pain. Peter wonders where that feeling went, the tranquil and unknowing high.

The darkness that had been teasing the corner of his vision finally starts to take over. A different reality lulling him in. He can't refuse, now. He just feels so… light. He feels like he could fly.

As he shuts his eyes and lays back against the tiles of the bathroom wall, he distantly hears a panicked voice, (from the sound and tone, its masculine) scream his name out in horror, but he's much to tired to care at all.

Peter finally gives into the looming offer of unconsciousness.

* * *

 **wow, this was a shorter than usual chapter, but here is the summary of what happened!**

 **-**  
 **Peter doesn't want everything to give the impression of perfection because that is not what he feels real life is like. He tears up his room at Stark Tower and feels peaceful and satisfied after doing so, but the feeling is only momentary and he demands more. All good judgement has left him at this point and he starts mutilating his left wrist when he starts falling unconscious from excessive blood flow. When he starts drifting out of consciousness, he hears a masculine voice yell his name in horror.**


	11. Chapter 11

The day at school is extremely slow moving for Connor, and he can't concentrate really on anything other than the self-appointed mission, to find who had killed Peter's surrogate mother - Aunt May. The teachers noticed his behaviour, and they had all heard about the tragedy of what took place in the Parker household weeks back, and usually, they'd let Connor be, as Connor was known to be a close friend to Peter.

Dealing with grief did come in many forms though, and none of them was sure it was healthy when Connor came through the door of the classroom and sat down looking awful. He took a seat next to Ned, and immediately everybody's eyes were drawn to Connor's sunken look, and worn appearance.

"Hey," Ned tapped his shoulder when the teacher was back lecturing about plant cells. Connor looked up at Ned, silently questioning. "Are you alright?" Ned nudges him a bit more. Connor immediately nods, deciding that telling Ned about how his system was on a critically low battery life, and manually recharging by going into standby mode would take far too long in this current predicament.

Connor could always go for a quick thirty-minute charging break to supply another fifteen hours to him. Going into a full charging cycle would take anywhere from 8-12 hours, and that wasn't what they needed right now.

Ned looked Connor up and down, doubtfully but accepting the lie, silently wishing he had the guts to tell Connor to go home, get some sleep and from the way he looked, maybe even eat a sandwich.

The teacher assigns them all to work from their textbook to, and then pulls Connor out of class to talk to him privately in the hallway. Connor's one of her favourite students, so it pains her to see him in a state like this. She explains gently that he doesn't look so good, and maybe he should visit the school nurse, who'd no doubt refer him to the school psychologist.

Connor takes the yellow card out of her hands, its a pass to the nurse's office, and he goes back into the classroom to collect his belongings from his desk, and tell Ned that he'll try and see him later if everything goes smoothly. The school nurse is kind and doesn't say anything about Connor's dishevelled look that contrasts with Connor's normal neat look.

The nurse could already tell that Connor looked sickly, and digested with a coin in his pocket far more than usual. He directed Connor onto the scale, and after a moment frowned at the number that had shown up, 51.8kg (114lbs), but didn't comment other than writing it down in a red pen, signifying that special attention should be directed towards Connor's weight, but otherwise continued with the medical examination.

He marks Connor's height, which is 6 foot tall, towering the nurse's measly 5"6. The nurse tells Connor to remove his suit jacket, so he can measure Connor's waist circumference, so Connor does, but looks oddly fondly at the suit jacket when removing it. The waist measurements come back as perfectly healthy for his height, but odd for his weight. It should have been thinner, but the nurse doesn't see it as a concern and moves on.

The only thing wrong physically with Connor ended up being his weight, everything including his heartbeat (thirium pump) and blood pressure seemed to be normal, and his eyes reacted normally to light.

What must have been wearing Connor down was probably stress and or a lack of sleep. The nurse couldn't find out what was stressing Connor, and as expected referred him to the school psychologist. The nurse was actually quite busy at the moment with another student, and only offered fifteen-minute sessions, so Connor just had to sit in the waiting room with his light blue card that said he was allowed to be in the area.

The waiting room for the school psychologist was decorated in pastel undertones, making Connor draw up similarities to a stereotypical nursery for a baby. There was a bookshelf against one wall with popular books, and cushions and bean bags against the other wall.

A big sign read 'Shh! Quiet please.' and another had a list of positive quotes. In the waiting room, were three other teenagers, two of whom Connor had seen around the school before, and one of which Connor was sure had tried to ask him out once, to which he politely declined. She was awkward, but got over it quickly, and wasn't an ass over her rejection either.

It was an hour later when the psychologist finally got to him and searched his name up in the system to look at all the notes the teachers put in about him. He continued typing for a few minutes and finally gave Connor a large grin.

"It's going to be simple, I'm going to ask you a few questions and you're going to answer with yes or no. After that, I'll ask you a few questions where I would like you to answer with an explanation."

He gets out a notebook and asks Connor the first question.

"Do you enjoy coming here, to school?" Connor responds with a prompt 'affirmative' and the future questions roll on smoothly until, a rather vague question, in Connor's own opinion, comes up.

"Have you ever considered killing yourself?" The words are so blunt that Connor doesn't even hesitate, and can't stop himself when the 'yes' leaves his mouth. Of course, he's considered killing himself, but not in the way that he wants to die, more in the way of a sacrifice, hell he'd almost done it on that balcony during the hostage system. It was part of his job to put himself in harm's way if it meant saving another, more important, more human life.

He didn't want to die, he just wouldn't hesitate if it meant protecting anybody else.

Connor didn't know if that was brave or stupid, but he didn't exactly care.

"Recently?"

Again, pretty vague but yes.

The psychologist immediately pulls up Connor's name in the school registry and puts 'high risk' in the teacher comments section. He pulls open a drawer and gives Connor a pamphlet with hotlines on the inside, and gives Connor a leather-bound journal that has a cringe-worthy 'Positive vibes' engraved on the front.

What did that even mean, positive vibes? Positive vibrations? English was extremely weird, and everything seemed so much simpler in binary to Connor.

The next period had already started so it was too late to let Connor go back to class when the psychologist dismisses him, so Connor's told to wait out the period in the waiting room.

He does, but not before going back to his locker to prepare his books for the next class.

Its twelve minutes and fifty-three seconds later when one of the office assistants retrieve call his name out gently.

"Mr Anderson, Mr Stark is waiting for you in the front office. He's come to collect you, he says it's urgent." Her clipped voice tells him to hurry up, and that she really did think that the situation was urgent.

Connor wonders how Dr Stark was allowed to pick him up, but reasons that he probably used one of his AI systems to hack in and register himself as one of Connor's emergency contacts, and guardians, in case of the event that Hank could not make it help out.

He probably went over it with Hank sometime, and Hank probably agreed extremely nonchalantly, and seemingly not taking any interest as if he didn't care about Connor, but Connor had already learned to read Hank like an open book, Hank cared but his cold hard exterior disguised it, and pretty well too.

Tony's pacing in the office foyer when Connor arrives and Tony snaps his head up in a jerking motion. He grabs Connor's arm and pulls him into a car where Tony's driver, Happy, is waiting in the front seat to take them away.

Connor already recognises, by the exits that Happy has taken on the freeway, that they're going to the Avengers compound upstate, as there was no other probable place that Tony could be deciding to take him too. Connor isn't an Avenger though, so he's confused to why he's being taken there, and Tony must've felt Connor's confusion because the next thing that comes through his mouth is extremely panicked.

"It's Peter. He's hurt, bad."

* * *

 **AN: It's a pretty short update but it has come to my attention that there isn't really a clear timeline of what is happening, and I've finally been bothered to try and set up whats going down**

 **It's right before Captain America: Winter Soldier, and I'm pulling the events of Spiderman Homecoming back a bit, so it has already happened by now..?**

 **It's also using the Connor before he gets teh option to deviate, so between the Chapter: Crossroads and the Chapter: Eden Club**


	12. Chapter 12

Connor stares blankly. Peter was hurt? How so? it didn't seem like a very important reason to pull him out of school, as the avenger's facility update probably had an extremely capable medical wing to support any injuries that Peter could've acquired.

So why would Tony even consider bringing Connor along?

"You're Peter's friend, right?" Tony asks, even though he knows its true, he just wants the confirmation. Connor nods, and Tony relaxes a little at this. "And he trusts you?" Connor nods once again, Tony physically has to control his breathing, using the techniques his old therapist told him would work to control a panic attack.

Before Connor can ask what's going on, they arrive at the facility, and Tony quietly escorts them in front of a room in the medical wing. He puts a hand on Connor's shoulder and looks him in the eyes, pleading.

"He need's your support, I don't know what I'd do without hi- Just do what you can… please?" Tony's eyes start watering, and a tear rolls down his cheek. Neither of them mentions it, or comment, but Tony wipes it away quickly.

How hurt could Peter even be to warrant this much emotion from Tony?

Connor steps into the room carefully, trying to mute most of the noise that is made from his shoes hitting the white tile floor.

The room is whitewashed and smells harshly of chemicals that one would find in a hospital, and extremely sterilised. Connor scrunches up his nose, the smell is so strong he can almost taste it on his tongue. Peter's laying on his side, with his back facing Connor and his front facing the large bay window.

From this point of view, Connor can't tells if Peter's sleeping or just laying extremely still. Waling a little closer, Connor determines that by the way Peter's controlled breathing is even, long and drawn out, that Peter was asleep. The IV drip was inserted into Peter's arm, and there were flowers in a jar by the bed.

Connor takes a seat by the bed and patiently waits for Peter to stir awake. There isn't anything for Connor to occupy himself with in the meantime, so he takes out his coin and gets lost in the swift movements made by his wrists and fingers, as the coin lightly dances on the surface of his fingertips.

The metal ping noise that comes from the coin is the only noise in the room beside Peter's quiet breathing. Everything was peaceful and Connor finally decided to examine Peter to see exactly how injured he was.

On his left hand it seemed there were many small cuts, and on his right hand, there was a bandage, with what seemed to be dried blood that had seeped through the thick coarse material.

The clipboard at the edge of Peter's bed is in reach, and Connor stretches his arm over to retrieve it without getting up from his spot in the chair beside Peter's bed and quickly scans over the official documented diagnosis, courtesy of one Dr Banner.

An array of incisions on patients right hand, extreme blood loss, needs stitches. Self-harm.

The rest of the document is just information on Peter's weight, height, blood type etc. As a trusted friend to Peter, Connor finds himself placed in the position of emotional support to the young Spiderman.

Connor already knows about self-harm, and doesn't feel confused or heartbroken like a normal person in his position would feel, and instead, he feels determined to help Peter get out of this predicament that he's somehow gotten himself into.

As a friend, Connor wants to do everything he can, but the pressure is starting to stack up heavily on Connor's shoulders.

Connor doesn't know if he could do everything he's determined to do, so many tasks but so little time. He needs to help support Hank, he needs to help out Hydra so by extension he could accomplish his goal of finding a way home, he needed to help find Peter's Aunt's murderer and he needed to support Peter.

There was just too much to do, busily trying to find ways to prioritise took longer than expected, and even all his programs running through his system, it would take far longer than the current time available.

He's sorting out all his files, putting each thing into a different category, and deleting caches he would no longer need, meanwhile trying to figure out how the hell he's going to deal with everything-

"Hey," A voice croaks at him, Connor looks over and sees that Peter has now awoken. He looks drowsy, and Connor can only assume that its due to all the morphine he's been put on to ease the pain in his arm.

"Watcha thinking about?" He mumbles, taking Connor's arm, grasping it. Connor ignores the question.

"Dr Banner says you're lucky to be able to regain full control of your arms and no nerve damage due to your accelerated healing." Peter shrugs but looks away ashamed when his injury is mentioned. He knows how painfully close he got to cutting through a major artery, and maybe then his spider healing wouldn't even be able to save him.

"I know." He tiredly looks towards Connor and slowly pulls off the present beanie. "You don't have to wear that around me y'know. You can trust me." And so Connor does take the beanie onto his lap, feeling free with his head exposed, LED wildly blinking. They breathe comfortably for a while.

"It's red." Connor jerks up from his relaxed position and turns to Peter, confused. "You're LED." Peter clarifies. What? How was his LED red? Connor wasn't in any state of high stress that he was aware of. Maybe it was just a few of his background programs running slower than usual.

Connor hums in acknowledgement. Peter and Connor are in a tranquil state, with their fingers intertwined in a firm hold. A sign of their trust and friendship.

Connor doesn't know how long it takes, but Peter drifts off back into his peaceful sleep and Connor's phone vibrates. It's a message, from Hank.

"May Parker's Assailant identified. Come if interested."

It was definitely something to consider, but what did Connor want more? Bringing justice to Aunt May's murder, or to support a delicate Peter Parker when he needed it the most. Deciding that he wasn't one for emotions and that Peter already had people around him to support him, he straightened his tie with one arm and ran a few fingers through his hair. He tied up his shoes with one hand, and then looked at the hand that was entangled with Peter's own, wondering whether if it would wake Peter to leave.

He tries pulling away gently, but Peter's grip is vice hard, moving with Connor's own hand as he tries to wiggle out of Peter's grasp.

"Huh?" Peter swipes at his face, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. "Where are you going?" His voice is still dazed, but it was definitely clearer than before. Perhaps in Peter's tiredness, Connor can make for an easy getaway.

"New evidence concerning your aunt's case has been found, I'm going to find the person now." Peter's hand is still around Connor's wrist, but in the time it takes Connor to say that sentence out loud, Peter has woken more, and isn't so drowsy, with a harder grip on Connor than before.

"Aren't there police to do that?" He sits up on his bed, now determined to convince Connor not to go.

"Well, yes, but-" Connor attempts to reason, but is harshly cut off by Peter.

"But nothing! It's not your job." Peter pulls Connor back into the chair, having to use his heightened strength to pull the android into a sitting position.

"I'm just trying to make you feel better…" Is Connor's final line of reason, somehow his program of negotiating is failing him, and instead a wall of errors blaring through his inner software.

"Finding her killer won't make me feel better, putting them to justice will certainly be right and just but it's not going to change the fact that she's gone and I'm just a huge fucking screw up, Connor." The raw emotion in Peter's voice makes Connor freeze, as he frantically tries to search through his systems for any pre-programmed instructions on how to deal with this kind of situation, and for the first time in forever, his AI system fails him in finding it.

Connor's extremely confused but seems to at least recognise that what Peter needs is not a hero, or a saviour, but a friend. He needed the support and with Ned much to preoccupied with other important things to his own personal life, and the other girls in their friend group being much to distant to provide any sanctionable help, Connor would now gladly step in to fulfil this role.

Only, he didn't know how to help. He was never a mental support android in his time, and Cyberlife only bothered to program him with relevant programs that were predicted to come in handy for potential deviant situations.

With something other than - and arguably to Connor, more important, to think about than deviants, he felt something flicker through him. Something clutching at the bottom of his thirium pump (no warnings or messages seemed to be warning him about any errors in his pump) and squeezed painfully, feeling like a hole was in the pit of his stomach.

It warmed up immensely when Peter stoop up full height, dragging the Iv behind him with one hand, and then hugged him tightly with his free hand. Because of Connor's immense height difference to Peter, Peter ended up burring his head into his chest, and slowly after Connor carefully considers the situation, he envelops two gentle arms around Peter.

The trust is showing with every passing second, and Connor for once, finds himself uncaring for the police's current investigation.


	13. Chapter 13

The hug doesn't last much longer than a few minutes, but Peter can practically feel waves of comfort and caring flow off of Connor. For the short time, he had known the boy, Peter could already tell that there was something in Connor's past holding him back from truly being himself and comfortable around the small group of friends that Peter usually hung out with.

There was that curve of Connor's face that made Peter warm up with joy, he hadn't really seen Connor smile often. There was a particular smile that just didn't look right and just looked fake or uncomfortable in Peter's own opinion. Connor ended up staying and ignored future texts coming in from Hank, as he could wait for now.

Dr Banner arrives early the next morning, when Peter is sleeping once again, and notices Connor, giving him a small friendly smile. Connor doesn't have that scent that screamed 'Im a teenage boy who hasn't had a shower in over 24 hours' so Bruce just assumed that Connor had somehow managed to have a shower.

Although Peter, on the other hand, was starting to smell a bit of perspiration. Bruce cut open the bandage on Peter's right arm and cleaned the wound, before telling Peter that he should have a shower to freshen up a little, and proper clothes would be available to him when he came out of the shower. Plans had already been made for sleeping arrangements, with the entire compound agreeing that Peter should be able to sleep back in his own bed in the room he occupied in the building, on the condition that Connor also stay at his side.

They laid down an extra mattress that seemed comfortable enough by the edge of Peter's bed, and placed sheets for Connor down. It was left unsaid what was going to take place, but everybody silently came to a mutual agreement, that Connor would stay until they deemed Peter stable enough to function on his own.

Connor was given a pardon from school, and nobody was even worried if his grades would suffer, as all they've seen from Connor's performance so far were perfect marks in every subject available to offer at the institution.

* * *

"Where is Mr Rogers, Dr Stark?" Connor asks, in the communal kitchen of the compound. He's preparing waffles for Peter, after finding that Peter did in fact, like waffles. Tony was sitting on a barstool that was on the outside of the kitchen island bench.

"He doesn't live here you know," Tony mumbles, mostly to himself. His eyes dart across the newspaper headline. Apparently, since Spiderman hadn't been out in a while, everybody was worried, and many conspiracy theories had been making their way up online forums, and the top trending video on youtube was a theorist ranting on about how being Spiderman would literally kill a person unless they had powers.

Tony answers the question anyway. "He's on a mission with Nat, some boat hostages or something." Connor nods on while chopping strawberries in half diagonally. He places them strategically on the plate along the two Belgium waffles. Connor takes out the syrup bottle and the carton of heavy whipping cream. Within a few minutes, the cream is whipped and also put on the plate.

Connor hand writes a note, saying that he's gone to his other job and that he'll be back before the day ends.

Tony's about to ask where Connor is going when he notices the SHIELD logo embroidered onto the left breast pocket of Connor's suit jacket.

Tony puts two fingers along the bridge of his nose. "You don't have to work there, you know. I'll raise your pay, whatever you want. I'm not comfortable with you going out and working for that slimy agency. What's up with them all of a sudden wanting you to go now? They haven't called you out in like weeks."

Connor shrugs, and leaves behind the plate of waffles on the breakfast bar, with a neat cursive that says 'Peter' on it. He takes the motorcycle keys off the key hook, within Tony's sight, and Tony doesn't say anything, allowing him to ride the sleek, black and discreet motorcycle to go to work in.

It's not the headquarters based in the capital city of New York, but rather a facility in the suburbs which he has been assigned to. Connor walks through the door with a confidence that told everybody that he knew exactly what he was meant to be there. The chip reader recognises the chip sewn inside of Connor's work uniform, and the man sat down at the front desk, redirects Connor into the locker room, where he is to get dressed into a SWAT-like style of uniform.

The uniform wasn't heavy, and well within Connor's carrying capacity, and he fell into line with the other agents on duty, who were tasked with the transport of Loki's sceptre. Connor looks at the eight digit identification code that had been placed on all of their uniforms, reminding him of the production code each Android from cyberlife would get given to them from the moment they walked out of the assembly line in the factory.

Each person in the team is also coincidentally a Hydra agent as well according to their codes. They get on their SHIELD issued motorcycles and follow a black SUV which holds the extraterrestrial sceptre in it. The trip isn't delayed by anything, and they eventually find their way to the military airport base that is going to take the sceptre to a research facility in a small European country called Sokovia. Connor commits the exact coordinates to his long-term memory.

Now that he knows where the sceptre would be, there's an advantage for him to get a jump on whether or not he can make the tear in the universe to send Hank back to their universe of origin. The tesseract had apparently been taken back to the realm of Asgard by Thor and his brother, but Connor was sure he could do something to get Hank back to their dimension.

Connor quickly composed a message in his mind to send to Hank via email, that they were getting closer and closer to returning home with each passing day, and he'd just made a huge leap in knowing where the sceptre was transported and now kept. A hydra facility disguised as a SHIELD commissioned one.

All Connor needed now was an excuse to be on site there, and he goes through all possible ways he could. He could hack into the database and transfer himself there under the guise of being a reinforcement sent to help guard the sceptre itself, but only the most trusted senior agents could go there, and even Connor couldn't hack in trust.

There also was another voice telling him that if he were to be based in the Sokovia facility, that would mean leaving behind Peter. Connor had no idea where this sudden apparent attachment to Peter came from and reasoned that Peter emotionally needed him, and Connor just didn't want to risk a human life.

Yes, that was it. Connor didn't care, he was just a machine, right? All he wanted to do was leave this mess with as few casualties as possible. Also, this school thing was holding him down, maybe he should just take the test that would let him enter twelfth grade, and graduate already. He wouldn't be very useful if he had to spend six or seven hours a day at a school. Connor made up his mind and decided that graduating would be the next part of the plan.

Connor made his way back to the Avengers compound in the suburb of New York. As he walked through the door, he found that the kitchen he left had been deserted and a little note saying that everybody that had stayed at the compound last night was in the training room, and even Peter felt up for a spar with a few of the others. Connor walked into said training room and quietly analysed all of the fighting patterns and preferred styles of each person.

After a while, Peter asked Connor if he was up for a small spar, and Connor waved his hand in dismissal, not really wanting to get into a fight right now, but Peter insisted. Connor once again dismissed him, and Peter was starting to think maybe Connor didn't really think he could go up against his own friend, so instead Clint volunteered to go up against Connor, as they were both SHIELD agents after all.

Connor finally relented after considering what would happen if he refused to spar. Peter would probably keep on insisting him annoyingly to spar. Clint prepared himself in an offensive position, and the fight was over by the end of the first minute, with Connor, somehow ending up being the winner of the situation. Clint got back to his feet, slowly, and quite a bit puffed. The fight was swift and smooth, with Clint only stumbling a few times against the seeming prodigy.

Tony broke the comfortable silence.

"Hey man, what the shit was that?" Connor shrugged, and Peter immediately spoke next, in an excited but hushed whisper.

"Dibs fighting Connor next!"

* * *

The asset looked on through the trees and aligned himself more comfortably in the position he was in, a rifle in hand. The strange boy who had been interacting with the rest of what SHIELD called, the Avengers, was waltzing down the deserted street, late into the night. In the outer suburbs of New York, the streets were empty late at night, so this was an ideal situation for the assets next task.

Once he had his rifle trained on the boy, he fired. In a turn of events, at the absolute last millisecond, the boy jerked his body, making the shot go through his upper abdomen rather than his head like it was intended. The asset swore but took off as the authorities would have been alerted of the gunshot by now, even though he had used a silencer.

If the asset had just stayed a few seconds longer, he would have noticed the blood seeping from the boy was, in fact, a vibrant blue, rather than the blaring red he'd come to be familiar with over the years of experience in this area of taking down people who Hydra deemed a threat. Yes, this boy was a part of their ranks, but the hit had been ordered because nobody could really trust this boy who had come from out of the blue, entirely dedicated to their cause.

It seemed… suspicious to many of the senior agents at Hydra, and as they could take no chances, this boy was a liability, demonstrated by his closeness to the Avengers.

* * *

Connor immediately noticed the Thirium pulsating out of his inner workings, and gave himself an estimated fifteen minutes before enough Thirium to have leaked out that his system would no longer be regulated by the amount of Thirium that would be left in his system. In an instant, he went through all possible future situations that could play out and decided that the best possible chance for his continued functionality would be to go to somebody who was extremely versed in engineering.

Somebody who he could trust, somebody who had the time and money to come up with something that could replicate thirium like effects. Somebody who didn't need a manual to know what they were doing, just a quick scan.

He needed to go visit Tony Stark immediately.

In record time, Connor hopped onto a nearby motorcycle and jumpstarted it without a hitch, getting to the Avengers compound in twelve minutes flat, probably breaking a few speed limit laws on the way. One hand was putting pressure on where the Thirium was escaping, and the other hand was doing the mundane tasks of opening up the Avengers compound door by making his fingertips replicate and take the unique shape of Peter's own fingerprints.

Tony was still tinkering in the lab on the lowest sub-level of the compound, regardless of the extremely early in the morning timeframe, and noticed immediately when Connor rushed into the room, limping, and holding down a wound with the vibrant blue liquid dripping out.

He freezes when Connor puts his arm against the desk and swipes all of the materials on the desk off, even breaking a bottle of beer while he was at it. Connor situated himself on the desk and started spewing the information like crazy.

"I'm Connor, the android sent by cyberlife. I've been shot and am losing too much Thirium to function for much longer, I have 120 seconds before I go through the protocol shut down. You need to replicate the Thirium inside me and give it to me ideally through an IV drip, if not you can just feed it to me like any other normal person would drink something-"

"Wait up! Oh my God Connor, hold up! You said you have 120 seconds right? Explain everything you can in that time."

Tony is already on the other side of the room gathering all the tools he'd think he'd use.

Connor sighed and began using the remaining 100 seconds left to try to pass enough vital information over.


	14. Chapter 14

The still body laying on the table looked disturbing, and more than once did Tony have to remind himself that no, it wasn't a corpse. It was Connor, and Tony had an uncertain confidence that he could revive Connor from this… comatose state. Tony refused to refer to Connor as 'just a machine' like Connor had referred to himself. Tony knew more than anybody else that a fully sentient AI could be developed, as shown by Jarvis, but the complexity of Connor's programming was astounding.

When explaining it to him, Connor glossed over quite a few major points, such as whether or not this… blue blood was the 'Thirium' Connor was talking about, or if it was another thing entirely. Tony used a cotton swab to collect a few samples of the blue blood, and then lazily covered up the body on the table with a white sheet. Tony didn't know why, but even just looking at something that resembled a human being made his heart falter every second it came into his peripheral vision.

Tony refocused the microscope over the slide of blue blood and saw that it wasn't just any old swatch of engine oil, it had microorganisms moving along on its own accord, cleaning Connor's inner components and maintaining them by sending some form of energy. It was the kind of relationship that everybody where they both benefitted, the microbes has a place to live, and Connor got his own personal benefits from them.

It looked like it would take at least a few weeks to replicate it, and Tony was afraid that Connor would be missing in action, and everybody else in the Avengers compound who knew about him, would definitely wonder what happened. Maybe it would be better to tell the other Avengers that are residing at the compound, but Tony eventually told himself that the news would be best heard from Connor himself.

Millions of questions and queries were running through Tony at the very second, but he resigned himself to not knowing any of the answers for a while, after all, Connor isn't conscious to answer them.

* * *

The words along the page swum when Peter once again tried to read it, just barely managing to get the story behind it. The teacher decided that getting the entire class to read a book with an extremely hard level of understanding, and using all the old timely vocabulary, would benefit the class. Peter absolutely groaned at the thought of said teacher.

He may be a prodigy in Science, Mathematics and Engineering, but English was not his strong suit. It was to be expected when your parents die and leave you with your uncle and aunt at the age of 4, and your uncle worked long and laborious hours to support the now family of three, and your aunt was the only one who could stay at home looking after you.

Even Aunt May sometimes had the odd job here and there. Uncle Ben took hours that meant he could only see Peter ten minutes before Bed, and words spoken between them were minimal, meanwhile, Aunt May typically had the morning free, but sometimes took a few babysitting jobs in the early afternoon.

The thing was, she was Italian, and had done her best to raise Peter like she would her own son back in Italy. Because of Peter's young age, he was quickly adaptable and stuck to Italian like duck to pond, and English became a distant blurry memory, hardly remembering anything he had learned in English prior to him living with his Uncle and Aunt.

he first time he had to relearn English was when he was ten, and Aunt May wanted him to go to a real school, now that they could afford to send him to one. Homeschooling was an extremely cheap option for them, at first. All the resources they used to educate Peter were publicly supplied, like the local public library, and museums.

They got by, and once Uncle Ben was promoted, the idea of sending Peter to a real school looked so much more ideal than ever before, and Aunt May could afford to take on a part-time job during the school hours, rather than staying an occasional paid babysitter once every now and then.

At first, Peter didn't understand English very well and refused to speak out of embarrassment, then he got a hold of the basic structure, and his accent made many girls in his fifth-grade class swoon.

This, however, made other boys in the class jealous that they all had pretty much the same regional accent, so they started to try and mock Peter's accent, putting on a highly toned up bad Italian accent on for the other girls. The girls, being young, took it anyway, and didn't mind that it the others had a false accent, and quickly forgotten about Peter. Time passed, Peter was more learned in English and when the whole 'lets do a mocking of the Italian kid' fad was over, Peter tried his best to disguise his accent in a, rather well impersonated American one.

Once he moved schools to one closer to home, everybody didn't even look twice, simply believing that he was another plain American new kid, nothing new or interesting about him. Peter refocused his eyes and muttered to himself in Italian when the kid to his right looked up at him with wide eyes. It was Flash Thompson again.

"Oh my God, Penis, I didn't know you were-" He started chuckling to himself before finishing. "That was Mexican, right?! I didn't know you were a Mexican! Maybe that's why you're so poor!" Peter immediately stands up, Flash was sort of intelligent, some of the time, passing most of his tests in Science, but this was stupidity.

"Mexican isn't even a language, Flash." Peter looks at him dead in the eyes, and Flash's eyes just crinkle even more with mirth.

"I'm sorry, S-p-a-n-i-s-h then," Flash says, enunciating each word as if Peter was too dumb to understand any of it, and gave a satisfied smirk when a round of laughter was heard. Peter looks his stare on Flash for a few more seconds before sitting back down. He'd had enough of this Flash kid, and there was only so much more he could take. After giving up trying to read the assigned book, Peter stood up and called out in Italian over his shoulder.

"It's Italian, dickhead."

The shocked eyes that made their way over Flash's face was well worth the curse.

* * *

It's when Peter arrives back at the compound that he begins to worry. Nobody else is in the compound apart from Tony, who is locked away in his lab and made a specific reminder for Peter to not come in, and Connor won't answer his texts, or even calls. The silence of the compound isn't as comforting as somebody would usually find it, and an eerie atmosphere hung around.

It made Peter feel extremely empty, as if there was a hole in the pit of his stomach. The level of soundproofing the compound had in place was insane, as Peter could usually always hear something, with his enhanced senses. There was always some rustling of animals in nature, or a distant conversation, maybe even ruffles of clothing as people shifted their posture.

But now, there was just silence. Usually, the compound's eerie silence was bearable, as there would typically be somebody talking with him, or intense training going on in another room, but nothing. Peter's ears couldn't pick up anything, and as a resort, the only sound that he picked up was the dull beat of his own heart.

After a while of contemplating a few things, Peter decided to be little productive and began cleaning his quarters in the compound, it was a little messy after… the incident. Less than twenty minutes later the entire room was pretty clean, and once again Peter was left with nothing to do. A shower would probably help with the somewhat horrifying lack of sound in the compound, but Peter didn't really feel like getting up right now, so he opened a new tab on Safari, and hours poured by as he just browsed and watched recommended youtube videos.

Somehow he ended up on a website for the local Catholic Church, and Peter ended up considering going to a mass. He wasn't strictly religious so to say, but going to Sunday Mass was a pastime that most Italians enjoyed, and by extension, Aunt May would always find the time to take them, this had stopped once Aunt May had finally gotten a job that involved her attendance on Sunday mornings.

Maybe he'd finally feel like he was letting her go peacefully, and maybe he'd ask Tony about going to Italy to visit places where his Aunt May had grown up, attempting to relate to her childhood could definitely put his mind at peace and maybe his grief could be released in a healthier way if he discovered more about her though experience.

Next Summer, Peter was determined to go to Italy.

* * *

Turns out, Michelle could speak a little bit of Italian, given her accent was horrendous and linguistics so bad its almost depressing. On a side note, everything she says sounds so formal, and never casual. It was like trying to hold a conversation with iPhone's Siri.

Eventually, in a thick Italian accent, Peter tells her she can speak English if she wants to, there isn't much of a difference anymore theses days to him, although his accent does return when he's particularly emotional, in this case remembering his Aunt May.

He didn't have an Italian accent around the time of the incident… because Peter was too emotionally shocked to properly process any of the situation, but now that he's had time to think back on it and reflect, there's something about it that brings back his accent.

Even a few times he's caught himself muttering in the damned language, realising that the other kids are giving him stares in the cafeteria. He decided to go back to school a few days back, as he couldn't just avoid it all together for the rest of his life, he had to resume a normal schedule sometime, and its never too late to start now.

Some kids were a bit curious to why he's been away so long, while others who had heard of the tragedy in the Parker household were just pitiful… except for Flash. Flash was always going to torment him, not really taking notice of how it affected him or any witnesses. A young girl, in a grade, bellow him, once stood up for him, and everybody avoided doing anything remotely taunting to him for a few days.

That girl, Artemis Crock, could be extremely scary sometimes. Peter eventually thanked her and she told him there was nothing to worry about, and they both went there separate ways after that. The next time Peter heard about her was when news got out that she was moving to a place called Gotham.

A crime cesspool apparently, Peter felt sorry for her but there wasn't anything he could do to stop her from moving. She was gone by the end of the week.

During Materials Design Technology class, Ned had offered Peter to build a new Lego set, Lord of the Rings, and Peter had gratefully accepted the offer, hiding behind the veil of normality it gave off between the two best friends.

"Where's Connor?" Asks Ned. Ever since they'd lost contact with Connor, he wasn't at school for the following week, and still hadn't come in yet. Since Connor was apparently extremely popular with a lot of the girls, and a few of the boys, rumours had started spreading immediately. Connor was the sort of popular person you'd admire from a distance, nobody being brave enough to talk to him, except a few ladies who shyly tried to flirt.

Connor didn't seem to get any of their attempts, looking there dumbly as he says 'You must be mistaken, I've never fallen from the sky before.' or a classic 'you've lost your number? I'm sure you'll find it again.'

His social stupidity was almost embarrassing, but that just made the various different people fall for him even harder.

"I don't know where Connor is Ned. He doesn't answer any of my calls, or texts. It doesn't even say he's read them, which he usually he does read them even if he doesn't respond! I don't think he's purposely ignoring us." Ned nods, looking thoughtful.

"Do you think it's," Ned looks around then stage whispers. "Spider-man or Avengers related?"

Peter immediately stops writing down his design for a clock and freezes. How hadn't he thought of that, it was entirely possible that somebody found out he was Spiderman and thought of kidnapping Connor to try to get to Peter. He'd have to take this up with Mr Stark immediately.

* * *

Tony sighs, deeply, pinching his nose.

"He's perfectly fine, Peter." Peter scrunches up his face in confusion. How was Connor fine?! Connor hadn't even seen any of them in a few weeks at least.

"I've given this some thought and I think telling you might be a good choice." Tony leads Peter down to the familiar lab, a lab that Peter's been banned from for a few weeks as well. He's assumed that Tony was just working on a dangerous or surprise project that he didn't want Peter involved in, but as they neared the room, Peter's anxiety was building up, heart beating little faster.

He didn't know what to expect, maybe a coffin preparing Connor for his funeral?

He wasn't that far off, technically.

Tony dialled in his eight digit password for the lab, and the door swung open, showing Connor positioned up, lifelessly in a glass case. It looked like he was one of those display barbie dolls for a moment, eyes open and all. What completely through Peter off was the hole through Connor's abdominal regain of his getup.

"He was shot." Tony says, as an explanation of sorts. Peter gets choked up and red fills his vision again, just like it did that night he spilt the blood out of his wrists.

"You said he's fine! He look's like he's dead, Mr Stark!" Peter felt like he's lost another important person in his life, even though he's only known Connor for a few mere months, Connor was like a best friend to him. He can't of lost another person so quickly, it was like life was trying to test his limits.

"He's not dead. Don't you notice something about him, what's this scene missing. What happens to somebody that gets hurt, what leaves their body." It takes Peter way too long to answer Tony, but he eventually does answer him.

"Blood," He says in Italian, but can't tell that he's switched from English. Peter looks back at Connor, as painful as it is, he can't tear his eyes off what he sees. Everything is there that should make the scene of a dead body that had been shot, everything except for the blood. There's the torn fabric of where the bullet had entered, and the caved in shirt, but no blood, none at all. "Where's the blood?" Tony nods at him stiffly, and ruffles his hair, not taking any notice of the language change. Through Peter's confusion, he still can't tell what this means for Connor, and how this relates to if he's alive or not.

"Now you're asking the real questions." Tony answers back, surprising also in Italian. Tony goes back to a few separate clips under his microscope, and looks at them intently before scribbling down something on a whiteboard, in a hardly legible script. "Which I am trying to answer. Connor has blue blood, and I thought it just might be a lack of hemoglobin proteins which make the blood red, but it isn't that. Somehow the blood evaporates completely after an hour of being exposed to oxygen."

Tony walks to the other side of the room, to a refrigerated shelf, grabbing a few flasks of different chemical compounds and a dropper. "Which is why," Tony points to Connor, "He's in that vacuum sealed case, so all of his blood doesn't just evaporate. At first, I thought recreating this would be easy, but I'm more of an engineer over a chemical person so, things happen and now its been a week or so."

Peter wonders what this has to do with the corpse, it hurts to think of Connor like that, and why it sounds like Mr Stark is planning on resurrecting Connor. From what Peter understands, it's not possible to do that.

"With all due respect, Mr Stark, I hate to be the one that tells you this, you can't reanimate a corpse, but will say that I wish you could." Peter bites the inside of his cheek, and gauges Stark's reaction.

Tony chokes back a laugh, but it's mirthless and really expresses that Tony is extremely sleep deprived and just living off various cups of coffee, and handfuls of caffeine pills at any given time.

"Wish," Tony mumbles, then adds in Italian, "Granted."

Suddenly a clip, as if it was on cue, plays from a projected hologram, courtesy of Jarvis, directly in front of them. It's a security tape.

 **"I'm Connor, the android sent by cyberlife."**


	15. Chapter 15

**"I'm Connor the android sent by cyberlife."** Says the projected figure on the screen, and the security tape catches every small detail of what had been happening at that exact moment in time, even walking around the security tape would show what was happening behind Connor.

" _I've been shot and am losing too much Thirium to function for much longer, I have 120 seconds before I go through the protocol shut down. You need to replicate the Thirium inside me and give it to me ideally through an IV drip, if not you can just feed it to me like any other normal person would drink something-_ "

 _"Wait up! Oh my God Connor, hold up! You said you have 120 seconds right? Explain everything you can in that time."_ Past Tony interrupts Connor, and real time Peter can see all of the little bits falling into place into Connor's mind, as he finds a new way to explain the situation.

" _I've been shot._ " Tony sprints through the room, trying to grab anything and everything he'd think he'd use. He nods at Connor to signal him to continue. " _I'm loosing a substance called Thirium. It's a vital fluid for Androids like me to function._ " Tony lays out all the tools he's picked out from his cabinets next to Connor, including a microscope, slides and a few cotton swabs.

 _"It's simple. All you need to do is recreate the Thirium and give it to me, preferably via an IV drip or making me consume it like any other normal human being would. After you've given me a sufficient amount, I should reboot and start up my main programs within a minute."_ Tony is almost forced to disagree with Connor, in theory, it sounds simple, but Tony was absolutely rubbish when it came to the chemistry side of things, as he was much more used to engineering and physics of the sort.

If Connor was an android, then maybe deciding to come to Tony would be a severe miscalculation on his own part, or maybe, some part of tony suggested, maybe Connor trusted himself enough with his own cybernetic life to allow Tony to help him with one of the most important things to him.

Another part of Tony said that just because Tony had made robots before meant that Connor probably believed that he was well equipped to fix a humanoid one, but that wasn't the case at all. Most robots, or rather Androids that Tony was familiar with didn't run on a series of human life components, including the so called Thirium pump and blood like substance called thirium. Even the main-wiring was designed to replicate nervous systems.

"So that's it?" Peter asks as he watches screen Connor shut down and slump in an unnatural position, lifelessly. "That's all he said? That's barely enough information to fix him." Tony agrees, but thinks Connor did tell them the basis of the problem, which was his thirium, or blue blood. It's enough, but as Peter said, barely.

"I did scan him, a full _scansione_ [1] this time as well." Tony motions to a few pictures he's hung up, a thorough scan of Connor so he'd know exactly was was on Connor's inside without having to take Connor apart piece by piece. The scan has also allowed him to recreate a fully automated hologram of Connor's body, with yellow dots in various places to represent all the things that Tony has taken notes about. "Literally, he's built like a human, and all the instructions to move parts of his limbs come from his main software centre, in the skull."

Peter considers all this, thrilled that there was a way to bring back Connor, but also upset about the implications that brought. If Connor was a machine, was anything real between them? The hug they had shared that one time, was it all just a machine following a pre-programmed set of instructions. Was it just a machine designed to emulate emotions when really there was nothing there?

Who built Connor, who was Cyberlife? Who shot him? Why was Connor sent to them?

Swiftly, Peter shoved all those unsavoury thoughts to the side for a while, opting to try and resurrect Connor before asking the questions, after all, he wouldn't get answers unless Connor could answer them. Wordlessly, Peter takes a seat in front of one of the three microscopes that had been set up and immediately got to work. He scribbled down chemical names and within the hour got the formula for Connor's blue blood.

"What- how?" Says Tony, who's been working on the formula for over a week now, watching dazed as Peter's got what he was looking for in less than a day.

"I invented my web fluid, didn't I?" Peter smiles then quickly explains what they have and what they need to get. Turns out, they have most of the things and the things they didn't could be bought at a hardware store, except one item.

"There's a certain microorganism that can only be found in one place, the bottom of Mariana's trench. It's one of the things that seem to help sustain the flow and composizione [2] of the Thirium. Tony nods, that would be another week, at least to retrieve it. He'd prepare a team of marine biologists to retrieve it for him, since he was not going all the way to Mariana's trench for that. It was just too far away when he could simply send somebody else to do it instead.

"Come back, same time next week and we can finish this little uh…" Tony looks at the glass casing with Connor stood up in it. "Pet project of ours." Peter nods slowly, and leaves the lab, this time Tony leaves as well, to get his first wink of sleep in over a week without.

—

School wasn't all that fun, but the new student made it a little more interesting. As it happens to be, the new student was actually Peter's best friend as a child in his old school, although they remember each other a little differently. Peter remembers the kid as his number one best friend in the entire world, and the one thing protecting him from hoards of bullies at that public school.

Harry Osborn remembers Peter as that interesting poor Italian student who could barely understand a lick of English, not this oddly Americanised Peter Parker with good grades all around, except for in English. Harry approaches Peter during English class and reintroduces himself.

"Heya Peter, I'm Harry, I was your friend in primary, not sure if you remember." He asks, hoping for recognition to fly through Peter's eyes, and isn't disappointed when it happens. Peter nods his head in acknowledgement, returning to his attempt to answering the assigned English questions on the book they're reading. "What, uh, happened to your accent?" Peter looks up once more, slightly annoyed this time that he's being distracted from his work.

"I hide it." He flips the book open to a reference chapter and writes down once more in his book. Harry squints at Peter's work.

"It's spelt c-h-e, not c-e." He corrects a word on Peter's page, and without looking up Peter makes the correction. A few moments of silence later, Harry feels the obligation to speak again. "What's wrong?" Peter sighs.

"Nothing, why?"

"You're just so quiet." Harry observes, and Peter's on the verge of slapping him. He just cannot today, he's got a lot on his mind, mainly to do with the entire Connor situation.

"Yeah, I'm doing my work. _Cazzo_ [3]." He responds. It sort of shuts Harry up for the rest of the period, but he can tell that Harry has more to say, and will probably try and approach him during their recess break, which luckily Peter's got PE the period after recess, so he's going to be getting changed then in the changing rooms, which is an excuse to be avoiding Harry, and then he's gong to get changed out of his uniform at lunch, and as far as he can tell, there isn't going to be anymore periods where he and Harry share a class.

Maybe he'd had to remind Harry later that not everybody had a super rich parental figure they could lean on, and some of them actually had to work their way through life to get a good job, although it does seem like Mr Stark would love to claim the title of Peter's own personal rich parental figure.

Peter would ask him about that later. Ned approached him just as he was returning to his locker at lunch, and asked him about Connor.

"I've found that Connor's sick. Too sick to answer the phone." It was a panicked lie, and he vowed to tell Ned the full truth later, but until Connor was revived, he didn't want Ned asking him all the big questions when he could easily ask the direct source himself, Connor.

The rest of the school day was fairly uneventful, and Peter didn't really know what to expect when going back to the Avengers compound. He'd made sure to notify everybody that today was the day that he was going to visit his Aunt May's grave, so they all knew not to disturb him, and Happy knew to pick Peter up around an hour after school ended, as the walk to the New York City cemetery from his school was at least twenty minutes, and Peter would take extra long walking with Ned. Happy knew that Peter would appreciate a good twenty minutes or so just talking to his Aunt's gravestone, although knowing she couldn't hear him, it would bring him solace anyway.

Peter made a small detour on the way to the gravesite to the flower shop, and bought a bouquet of a flower his Aunt had explained the Italian meaning to, a Chrysanthemums flower. In Italy, it was the flower of the mourning, and Aunt May liked the sombre meaning behind it, basking in it's beauty.

Getting a few different colours, Peter was satisfied and made the rest of the way to the cemetery alone. Arriving, Peter added the new flowers to the pile of floral already lain down there. His Aunt apparently had many acquaintances and coworkers from the various jobs she had taken up over the course of living with Peter, and had kept in touch even after she had dropped a few of the jobs for better, higher paying jobs.

Even though they hadn't shown up to the funeral, probably not wanting to intrude on the people who were extremely close to her in the time of mourning, but that didn't mean that they just ignored her death, as they left many spiritual gifts to help her move on to the afterlife, and finally be at peace after her life of continuously being one of Peter's only support beams once Uncle Ben had been shot and killed in that fateful accident.

That one particular accident had made the remaining Parker's extreme advocates for more restrictive gun laws, and more restrictive laws of battery and violence.

Happy picks him up, and looks mournful at Peter's sombre look on his face. Although he could tell that something had been lifted off of Peter's chest, there was something that lingered, something the told him that Peter was slowly letting go, and calming down after the huge shock that was the death of his Aunt.

Peter attempts to smile and joke around, even though he knows that they both know he's not really in a high mood.

" _Ti sembro depresso? [4]_ " It's a few moments of silence that he realises, that no, Happy doesn't understand Italian, like in the casual way that he speaks it so randomly, integrating it in his sentences. Nobody yet had really called him out on it, but ever since the passing of his Aunt, he's been getting closer in the roots that he shared with her, even reverting back to the language which she had raised him in.

—

 _Where the fuck was Connor_? Hank thinks, sourly. It's been at least a week since he'd last seen the boy - android, and he can't help but think it's an odd amount of time to be undercover or whatever the fuck he was doing, in aiding them find a way home. Hank reasoned it was important but couldn't help but argue that if it really was that important, wouldn't Connor, the asshole, tell him about it, even through a simple text message?

—

He's finally talked about it, briefly, with Tony, and they both agreed. It would only be so long before the social services kicked back in and somebody would come looking for Peter, to drag him into the public government system, which Peter bluntly refused outright to be placed in the hands of the government, not these days anyway. So he's done the hard part.

Asking Tony if he'd be okay with taking guardianship of him.

Tony was surprisingly chill with it, barely giving it more than a second of thought, apparently having already signed all the papers and all he needed to do was tell Jarvis to send them in. The response had taken Peter, whom had been preparing to come up with millions of ways he could earn his board and keep, by surprise. A simple 'Sure, why not?' was all that it took to catch Peter unaware.

By some kind of luck, Tony's mother had been Italian, and wouldn't stand for her child not having an Italian citizenship, thus Tony had grown up with an Italian citizenship, and a large vocabulary in the language, with many of his early childhood nannies being Italian themselves. Tony becoming Peter's legal guardian meant it was much easier for Peter to gain the citizenship of Italy, which he had obtained within moments through a few strings, that may or may not have been legal, that Tony had pulled for him.

This meant he didn't need a visa of any sorts to enter Italy, for his planned holiday of spiritually getting closer to his Aunt. Maybe he'd even go through the Italian school experience, as a passage of rites to get the most of the experience of growing up Italian as possible.

 **AN:**

 **[1] scansione = scan**

 **[2] composizione = composition**

 **[3] cazzo = dick**

 **[4] Ti sembro depresso? = do I look depressed?**

 **Yes that is real Italian, written by me, not google translate. Also, small rant-  
**

 **TIPS: do not, ever, ever, wear flip-flops in Italy. It's not a real shoe, if you want to show us your feet, wear sandals, and most of us here take our fashion extremely seriously, it's like going out wearing pyjamas-**

 **Idk why I had to say that but now that I have it's like a huge weight has been lifted off my chest. Probably cause I saw my Australian cousin wear her flip-flops (or "thongs" as she calls them) outside and I was a little bit sad at how annoyed I got**

 **Also, I'm going to respond to all Comments left on this fanfiction from 15:33** **Monday, 27 August 2018 (UTC+2) Until the same time 24 hours later, If I don't get back to you right away, don't worry, I will get back to you eventually.**


	16. Chapter 16

Peter shook up the last of the concoction he was making. It was the last approximated batch of the thirium they needed to manufacture for Connor to awaken from his comatose state. It had been a week or so since he'd first initially found out about the situation, and honestly there was a list of questions he had compiled for Connor to answer about the situation, mainly being who the hell had made him, who was cyberlife?

There was no real way of knowing, just yet, who exactly Connor was and why whoever made Connor thought that it would be a good idea to place him around the Avengers. There was a set of possibilities that raced through Peter's anxiety fuelled mind. He was no Tony, but Peter hadn't had a wink of sleep in a few days, furiously trying to find the exact right conditions that the Thirium he was making would flourish in.

The microorganisms weren't really agreeing with the batch of toxic Thirium, when Peter finally found that he just had to freeze the microorganisms to severely slow down their metabolism so that the integration with the rest of the chemical formula wouldn't really be a hinderance to the process.

Pouring the last drop of Thirium into an IV drip bag, Peter felt his heart beat faster and faster with each passing moment, each second ticking closer to the time of Connor's awakening. It was still a wild card on how Connor was going to regain consciousness, and if it was going to be like dropping your phone, would data be lost in the process of breaking and fixing Connor? What would he last remember if so?

Peter tried to not focus on these variables but was finding it harder, with his hands getting sweaty, making Peter almost fear dropping the carefully produced Thirium. He took in the look of Connor's clammy features through the vacuum sealed, temperature controlled glass casing he was situated in.

It was almost like looking at a corpse, and reminded Peter of a not too distant situation he had found himself in a while back. Aunt May. He couldn't help but pull up the parallels of the bodies. Both lifeless, eyes like glass, face frozen in expression. His hand's were shaking, but he'd noticed it far too late, and when he did he was already on the ground, trying to control his gasping breathing.

It was almost like drowning, except he wasn't. Except he shouldn't be drowning. He should be strong. Gasping for air like he was going to die if he didn't, he kept on taking in breaths but none of it was enough, it was like none of it was getting into him. He could feel every inhale filling up his chest, but couldn't feel the release.

These kinds of sudden attacks that left him on the floor feeling like an idiot hadn't been isolated incidents, and had been frequent. Peter knew the signs, even recognised them, but had ignored them for a while, reasoning that these kinds of things couldn't happen to him. They couldn't happen to Spiderman, who was supposed to be strong. The Spiderman wasn't meant to sit there helpless having panic attacks.

Peter collected his thoughts once he was calm enough to see clearly. He looked to his left, thankful to see that the IV bag containing his hard work had, in fact, not split on impact of dropping to the ground. His breathing was still quite erratic, so he turned on Spotify, and listened to a playlist that he'd composed a while back, using his Ironman earphones Tony had bought him a week prior.

After playing through a few songs, he'd finally stood back up on the third track. Peter checked the track title, Not Too Late by Lemaitre. It was a pretty okay track, not the best he's ever heard but still nonetheless gave him goosebumps every time he's heard it. Something in that song just simply resonated with him.

It had a catchy beat, and a meaning he could relate to and understand. He'd listened to it enough in the past few days that he could sing the song, without needing to look at any lyrics. All to soon the song ended, and his Spotify froze, probably due to a loss in internet connection for some reason. Damn the free phone version. He'd have to ask Mr Stark for premium, later.

Peter was certain the height of his panic attack was over, and was almost contempt with ignoring his symptoms for as long as he could get away with it. He bent over to pick up the IV bag, and then made his next mistake, looking over at Connor once again. A wave of nausea came over him, almost enough to knock him back to the ground again. The shortness of breath came back, this time less severe, but occupied with a pounding headache and a mass of white spots threatening to take over his vision.

"Pete." He recognises the voice, although it sounds distant, the feeling is warm. The silhouette of the person faintly lets Peter know it's Mr Stark. Peter can't find it in himself to try and respond to that properly with words, coming out in slurs, as if he were drunk.

"Quuuuu-" He frowns, trying to look for the word again. "Questo, m-mio nome…? **[1]** " He's faintly aware that it doesn't make any sense, but is hoping that Mr Stark would get the gist of what he was trying to say. Even in Italian, the language he's more fluent in, everything makes more sense in his head than when he says it out loud. He's distantly aware of the warm arms that engulf him.

"Sono qui ora, Pete. **[2]** "

He's sitting there an eternity, his dull feeling in his limbs slowly returning, with his heart rate slowing, and breathing becoming more evened out. There's a hand, that presumably belongs to Mr Stark, that's tracing circles along his shirt sleeve, it soothes him, as the gentle touch would soothe an infant. Mr Starks saying something, that Peter reckons he could understand if he strains his mind a bit more to simply just process the things he hears, but he doesn't, opting for the choice of placating dull noise.

* * *

They were just sitting in the common room when Jarvis alerted to them that Peter had fallen and hadn't gotten up for a while, suggesting that it may have been a panic attack. Tony knew quite a bit about panic attacks, and had certain experiences with them before… in the past.

Bruce had gotten up immediately, following Tony down into the Lab. Tony wasn't aware that Peter had decided to continue working on the Thirium solution, without his supervision despite their agreement be that he'd be there in the lab with him at all times. He'd found Peter mumbling in broken Italian, that had made no sense whatsoever, whether Peter realised this, Tony had no idea.

"Pete." He tries to break Peter out of his mumbling, into a more comprehensive state. Peter squints and looks directly at Tony, seemingly to just either ignore Banner altogether or not see him at all. Peter takes a few attempts to respond, and when he finally does its understandable, to Tony at least.

"Questo, m-mio nome…? **[1]** " Peter looks up at him, eyes wide, but the usual brightness doesn't quite reach his expression. Yes, Tony thinks, That is your name. He would almost laugh at the lack of grammar, had this been a different situation.

"Sono qui ora, Pete. **[2]** " Tony responds with instead. He wants to say anything, anything at all to let Peter know that he was safe, and to anchor Peter in the present, that he didn't have to worry about anything else, and he owed the world nothing.

But Tony never really had a way with words, so he settles for song lyrics, to a song he notices Peter has been listening to on his Spotify account. He doesn't remember the entire song, but he does remember the last bridge.

"Più leggeri della cenere, **[3]** " Tony begins, and only then remembers that Banner was standing right next to him, in the same room. He shrugs, looking sheepish and with his eyes, he promises that he'd explain later to Banner. "Voliamo via se il vento soffia forte. **[3]** " Tony doesn't say it in the same way the song does, and certainly does the original song no justice, in his own opinion, but it seems to be soothing Peter anyway so he continues.

"Più preziosi di un diamante che. **[3]** " Another bar in the song, and Tony realises that Peter is stabilising in his emotional state, so in a quick decision, he picks Peter up bridal style, gently, and makes his way into the lounge room of the compound.

"Diventa luce quando fuori è notte **[3]**."He's climbing up the stairs now, and it seems though Peter hasn't noticed that he's being moved yet, just quietly studying the features on Tony's face, and somehow subconsciously had put his arms around Tony's neck. Tony struggles under the weight, and notices that Peter is far to light for his age and height.

"Divento luce se là fuori è notte. **[3]**." With those final lines, Tony gently places Peter onto the couch, with a blanket carefully tossed over him. Tony and Banner quietly back out of the room, making sure to shut the door quietly. Tony tells Jarvis to not let anybody else in, and alert Tony to when Peter looked responsive again. The poor kid's been through a lot, and has a lot of pressure and responsibilities placed on him, Tony could understand if the weight was becoming a lot, the kid deserved more breaks.

Banner held a questioning stare to him in the kitchen.

"So, you and Pete, Italian, huh?" Tony nods silently, sipping his glass of wine. He just needed something this afternoon, he barely had any alcohol to drink these days, so other peoples opinions be damned. "Did you guys learn it together as a bonding experience or something?" Tony shakes his head this time, and speaks.

"No, it was purely coincidental that we both knew the language. My mother was originally Italian, so were my first nannies. Peter's Aunt mostly raised him, and she was Italian as well." He shrugs, and takes another sip of his wine.

"I was actually thinking about taking Peter over there, temporarily, to let him get a feel for it. Maybe for six months next year. But," Tony thinks about the situation with Connor. "Something came up. Hopefully, we'll still go though." He waves around his hand for emphasis.

"We can track down his Aunt's family, enrol him in a high-school, he could do Liceo Artistico **[4]** , but knowing him, he'd choose Istituto Tecnico **[5]**. The former is an education much more immersive and unique though. It's completely up to him, hell, he might even decide he wants to go to Istituto Professionale **[6]**." Tony hardly cares what Peter would decide to do, having full faith that Peter would be great at any choice in the end.

"Uh, Tony." Banner says, more pointedly this time than before."

"Yep?"

"Are you aware you've got a corpse in your lab?"

"Uh huh."

"Care to elaborate on that?"

* * *

 **AN:**

[1] Questo, m-mio nome...? = This my name?  
[2] Sono qui ora, Pete. = I'm here now, Pete  
[3] The last verse from this song open. spotify track/ 0DRKnh0BloxJHyhXkfbiX8?si=J4VZRXSVTBe6KBr2sJ_Atg **(remove spaces)**  
[4] One of the high school branches you can choose in italy, typically at 14-ish. This one is more cultural  
[5] One of the high school branches you can choose in italy, typically at 14-ish. This one is more sciency  
[6] One of the high school branches you can choose in italy, typically at 14-ish. This one is more professional


	17. Chapter 17

"So you just have a corpse in there." Banner looks directly into Tony's eyes, trying to wring the answers out of the eccentric man.

"It's Connor." It's a start, but barely enough information in Bruce's eyes. Besides, knowing the name of the corpse just made it more personal to him. Who even was Connor?

"Who? And why does knowing their name make it better?" Knowing the name doesn't make it better, and it doesn't justify having their fucking body in your lab. Tony had a lot to answer for, even after Banner got the answers to these there'd still be something else.

"You've met him. He was comforting Peter that time in the medical wing." Banner does remember briefly seeing Connor before and was a little saddened that he had died so quickly

"We barely acknowledged each other. Tony, seriously, what's going on?"

"He's not a corpse. He's an Android and Peter's friend." Bruce's mouth is agape.

"An Android?! What are you doing with it? Repairs?" Tony shrugs. In a way, he is repairing the Android, so it's not a lie. Tony doesn't know why he does it, but he decides to remain quiet on the topic. He guesses he just doesn't want to drag Bruce into the matter. It's bad enough that Peter's got himself all caught up, but he can't pull in the rest of the Avengers for a matter that looked like it wasn't threatening in the slightest.

"He's not an 'it'." Tony insists. He places the bag of Peter's homemade Thirium onto the IV hook and inserts the needle into Connor's forearm. With the drip steadily filling up Connor's lost Thirium, he should be waking from three minutes from now.

Tony sets up a timer, that should go off approximately when Connor should be just ready to awaken from this comatose state. Peter's in the other room calming down, and Bruce looked like he still had a million different questions.

He wasn't the only one.

Tony shrugged off each and every one of Bruce's questions, in a clear show to say that he too had no idea what the hell was going on. The last minute of waiting is in silence, as the only sound they can hear is a small beep coming out of Connor somewhere, and his LED whirrs to life, flickering in between the two alternating colours of stress, an angry red and an amber yellow.

Connor's pupils seem to come online, as his eyes alternate in and out of focus. In sharp robotic movements, he stands up from the glass casing, with paces that seem too abrupt and jagged to seem human.

"What systems are online?" Tony asks him, carefully enunciating each word clearly making sure he would be understood like somebody would when talking to the artificial intelligence that comes in their phone software. Although he knows Connor has understood slang before, he wonders if in their initial startup if they understand right away, or if they have to wait for their communications software to warm up first.

"Auditorial systems - Online. Speaker Systems - Online. Standard Investigation Systems - Online. Navigation Systems - Online. Server Coolin-" Tony cuts Connor off, it seems like the list of everything that he's going to say is far too long, and Tony doesn't have all the time in the world. He's tired and wants to cut straight to the chase.

"Okay, what isn't online?" If there's something wrong, Tony needs to make sure Connor's in working order, although he's reluctant, he still doesn't know exactly what Connor's doing with them, or if he's even sent with any good intentions.

"Everything is online." Connor's stare is blank, as if every time he gets involuntarily shut down, he loses a piece of humanity that he's built up.

"Any warnings?" Tony's still incredibly curious.

"Yes. An alarming amount. High amounts of Software Instability have been detected." Tony buries his head in his hands. Software Instability couldn't mean anything good, could it? He almost groans in frustration. Maybe it wasn't a huge threat, and he could let the software instability slide as a result of the software instability simply mistaking itself for self-learning technology?

"Can you speak… Italian?" Tony asks, maybe it would be much more convenient for Peter if more people could effetely communicate with him in Italian. He feels relieved when Connor nods his head.

There'd be another person in the compound who Peter was 100% comfortable talking to.

"Can you function, with the software instability warnings in place, or will I have to fix that?" Tony wants to know, after all, he didn't have all the time in the world, and tinkering with an extremely advanced Android's innards was not on his bucket list.

Connor once again acknowledges his question with a nod, confirming that he didn't need any repairs and could totally function with software instabilities. Tony supposes that's good, but then there's the mystery of where the hell Connor had come from.

"Do you pose any ill intentions to the Avengers or the citizens of this planet?" Bruce asks, and Connor looks at him like he's off his head, and the emotion looked so raw and out of place for a so-called unfeeling machine. His face is incredulous, and Dr Banner has the dignity to look sheepish.

"No, I do not pose any ill intentions to anybody on this planet." Banner didn't look convinces, as if he knew that Connor wasn't really talking to him, and he was just being remotely controlled by an outside force.

They're not sure if they can trust his own judgement at the moment, but Connor's done nothing to prove that he's harmful towards anybody else. Tony reasons with himself and decides to give Connor the benefit of the doubt towards the situation like he would with a human. But that was the variable. Connor wasn't human.

He had never really thought about what he should do in this situation, there wasn't exactly a protocol for 'Futuristic Robot gets shot and I help him repair'. Should he hand Connor over to SHIELD? Should he keep it under wraps? Tony knew that his he handed over Connor to SHIELD, there wasn't a likely chance that they'd be seeing each other again.

SHIELD didn't like sharing lots of information with Tony, and he'd probably had to resort to breaking into their servers to figure out what happened to Connor at the end of it. Tony decided it would be best if they just kept on going like they were before they'd found out Connor wasn't really a person at all. He'd tell them all about him in his own time.

Tony types up a quick message on his phone to Hank… Connor's father. If Hank was Connor's father, was he also a Robot? Or was he a person who made Connor? If so, Tony wanted to hire this man, he was wasting his life away working in the police force.

"I've sent a message to your… father." Connor looks up at Tony, at the mention of his pseudo-father, Hank. "He's picking you up in about 40 minutes." Connor nods slowly and obediently waits in silence. The others look uncomfortably at him.

"Do you want to speak with Peter?" Bruce offers him, and Connor knows that he does want to, but it's not vital to his mission right now, so he doesn't see the purpose or benefit of talking to Peter right now. Connor replies in an even tone, with a simple 'No' to get it across. Tony almost looks shocked, but he suppresses the urge to shape his face into any particular expression.

"Well, Peter would like to see you, so tough luck." He doesn't give Connor any chance to respond negatively or any choice in the matter, as he gestures for Connor to follow him, into the lounge room where Peter is waiting.

It's a long stretch of hall that they walk through, and Connor notices the walls are littered with what appears to be pictures of Peter, and many of the times Peter's shared with the Avengers. Most of the pictures are in the perspective that you can almost definitely confirm that it was Peter who took the picture. The pictures of Peter in them, are taken from a selfie point of view.

Connor glances over most of the photos, except a single one he sees when he comes near the end of the hallway. It's in the corner of his eye, but it catches his attention anyway. It's a group photo that he can vaguely remember Peter taking once at lunch at school. Peter's arm is extended out from behind the camera, presumably holding it to take the image, and just fits himself in the frame. The rest of them were there, Gwen, MJ, Ned, Connor and Peter himself. When the whole group were together before shit had hit the fan.

The picture, as Connor recalls, was taken one month before the tragedy of Gwen Stacey's death. You could almost consider that one single event in time the turning point of when everything spiralled out of control. First, it was Gwen, then it was Aunt May. Then Peter had become overly stressed out, turning to rather unsavoury outlets.

Connor got shot, was comatose for an extended period of time and Peter barely made appearances at school anymore, too occupied with other Avengers-related problems, and trying to cope with all the events that had befallen upon him.

Everybody in the picture was smiling, and so carefree, unknowing of the horrors that the future months awaited them. Tony notices Connor's pause near the end of the hallway and takes the opportunity to say what's been in the corner of his mind for at least five minutes now.

"So your father… is he…?" He waits for Connor to finish the sentence, clearly not knowing if he should be careful around Connor from now on, if being an android was a touchy subject for Connor, was only something Tony could assume to know. He could never be too careful about this kind of thing, right?

Connor immediately seems to catch on and shakes his head.

"Oh, Hank? No… He's just human." The way Connor says 'Just human' is as if he believes that being in Android is far more advanced than humans in every fact of the matter, but not in a way that he believes himself higher than humans, or that he thinks they should be looked down on.

Tony hums but clearly shows that he doesn't quite understand yet. He doesn't know how that would work unless Hank was the one who had made Connor or that Androids could develop emotional attachments to others around them.

It's only a moment more they stand in this now comfortable silence, that Tony reaches for the door handle to the door located at the end of the hall, and ushers Connor in. Connor can see that Peter's sat down at a rather comfortable looking couch, looking up at the television watching an episode of Futurama that's dubbed in a popular romance language, that Connor recognises as Italian.

Peter acknowledges their arrival but doesn't move his eyes away from the screen. It's a quick thumbs up and a small 'Hello Tony, Connor' before he realises something. It takes him a few minutes more for him to comprehend that Connor's woken up and actually in the same room as him.

"So who shot you?" Is the first question that leaves Peter's mouth before his mind can bother to stop himself. He's immediately mortified at what he just asked. Tony gives Peter a shocked, and almost dirty look. Peter goes to apologise when Connor interrupts him to answer the question.

"A Hydra asset known as the Winter Soldier." He doesn't elaborate, and nobody makes him elaborate, but Tony would like to know eventually, even if it would be in Connor's own time and on Connor's own terms and conditions.

Tony's been becoming more and more patient over the years of dealing with multiple instances of various children and teenagers as Iron-Man, and he'll be extremely patient with Connor.

He won't try and wring answers out of him.


	18. Chapter 18

They got their yearbooks back today, flipping through, Peter inwardly cringed at his portrait. He didn't look his freshest the day it was taken, having been out as Spiderman until five am that morning, getting about half an hour of sleep on the bus, only to remember it was photo day.

Realising that every kid had a copy of his portrait looking like he'd just shot up on heroin moments before the picture was taken. Peter also noticed that his picture wasn't under his homeroom's section, and instead, it was under the 'exchange students' subheading, saying that he was coming from Italy, how had the yearbook committee even gotten away with that?

It wasn't even funny or mocking, just a mistake. Peter honestly didn't know what they got out it. Ned looked over at Peter.

"When's Connor going to come back?" He asks, timidly. He knows there's something up with the boy, and that it was probably Avengers related, but Ned didn't know the specifics of any of it. Peter shrugs carelessly. He doesn't know anymore.

It killed him to not know, but he wasn't going to push Connor any further. Connor's name was taunting in his contacts list, and it took all the self-control Peter had to not call him up. He trusted Connor. Trusted Connor enough to know that there was definitely a reason for his extended absence from both School and the compound for the last week.

It's during his first class that Peter's pulled out. There was some kind of debriefing that was apparently much more important than Peter's language convention class. He hoped to god that it was important, English was hard and not something he did very well in, barely scraping together a C in his last test.

A car's waiting for him out front, as expected it's Happy. There aren't any words exchanged between them, Peter silently shuffles into the back seat uncomfortably. They take a route that is unfamiliar to Peter, so he assumes that they aren't going to the compound or Stark Tower.

They don't. Happy drives him forward to a government-run building, passing him a keycard and waits for him to get out the car. Peter's confused and doesn't know where to go. Awkwardly approaching the front desk of the professional looking building, the woman sitting behind gives him a once-over and directs him to an elevator, all without pausing from her passive-aggressive typing. It doesn't look like she's used the backspace key once.

Peter simply nods and walks into the elevator. There are no buttons for floors, and he hadn't been told which floor to head to. He's just standing aimlessly when a woman walks in. She's dressed professional but holds a defensive stance. She notices his confusion.

"You gotta hold your key card against the scanner. It'll take you to the floor that you're scheduled or appointed to." She holds her own key card against a small white square on the wall of the elevator. There's a little beep then a robotic voice that says "Dr Dora Skirth. Level 7 access." She motions for him to scan his own card.

"Peter Stark. Level 4 access." Hang on, _what_. Peter _who_?! That was _not_ him. Although his guardianship had been taken over by Mr Stark, Peter doesn't recall ever having his last name changed to Stark. That was _not_ something that had progressed, or developed in the past week or so.

If Mr Stark had done that behind Peter's back, why hadn't he told him? Peter wasn't exactly sure if he was ready to leave the very name that connected him to his Aunt and birth family. Sure, he considered Mr Stark his family, but there wasn't a stage that he considered himself a _Stark_.

"What is this place?" Peter asks the shorter woman in the elevator with him. She tilts her head.

"A SHIELD issued head-office and laboratory. You're headed to level 4, which is where all the high priority conference room is, so I'd assume you're a pretty important person. Maybe a young investor?" She shrugs but continues on.

"I'm a geneticist. Although they're closing the department I work in due to budget cuts next month, I'm getting a transfer to a privately run company. Life foundation. They do space exploration and extra-terrestrial investigation." She notes that she's been rambling, and blushes.

There's an empty silence and Peter feels obligated to explain himself.

"I'm Peter. Adopted by… Mr Stark. I think that's why I'm here." She nods, as if understanding his situation, although the reality of it is that she doesn't understand any more than he does. _But_ Peter does have an inkling that he's here on Spiderman business than he is on Peter Parker business. The elevator lets out a small chime, notifying that he's on level 4 now. The doors open wide open and Director Fury is seated at the end of a large conference table.

"I'm assuming you know that we're here to talk about your 'extra-curricular' activities." Fury states plainly. The tone is enough to send shivers down Peter's spine. His anxiety levels rise uncertainly, and his mind immediately searches to every single thing he's done for the past five years, trying to find anything to warrant a talk with the man in front of him.

"I'm so sorry for sneaking into one of your storage facilities that one time and couldn't get out for a lon-"

"I'm sorry - you what?! Anyway, we're not here to talk about that." Fury looks into a security camera positioned into the corner of the room and makes a hand gesture. Peter doesn't know what it means, but notes of it to search for later. In walks an old woman - around 70 - dressed in a nursing outfit pulling through a tray-table stocked with medical items.

"We need your blood." Fury doesn't tell him what for but doesn't give him a chance to refuse anyway. Unless Peter was to attack them and run away, he couldn't stop the nurse from extracting two vials of his blood. She runs one vial through a centrifuge machine and then spills a few drops of the blood onto a slide before placing it onto the stage of a microscope.

She squints, then scribbles down something onto a clipboard.

"Uh huh, honey," She refocuses her attention from the microscope and looks Peter into the eye. "I'm afraid that you have a special genome located on your 23rd chromosome." She sweet talks to him as if he's four, instead of fourteen. "All these big science-y words must be confusing you, this is all just grown-up talk. You'll understand one day, sweetie." She pulls off her gloves one at a time, without moving her gaze from Peter.

"It's simple, really. All this means is that you're special. What do we call special kids like you? Mutants. You have a single different gene - the x-gene - which makes you different, and with that, potentially dangerous." Peter's panicking, his heart is pounding in his chest, as he processes what this could potentially mean. He knew what certain government departments liked to do to mutants.

" 'Dangerous', that's a pretty big word, huh? It means you have the ability to hurt somebody. We don't want to hurt anybody, do we?" Despite her continuously and obviously baby talking with a falsely sweet voice to him, Peter finds himself shaking his head to her words. No, he doesn't want to hurt anybody. His constant anxiety that he'll hurt somebody innocent when he's in the suit plagues him when he sleeps.

"Do you know your mutation yet? Has anything… strange happened to you?" She trains her eyes on him once more, and Peter struggles to speak out a shaky 'no' from underneath his breath. It's a lie, but he had always thought that his abilities had come from a spider-bite he'd acquired from sneaking around a laboratory on a school field trip. It also makes sense to him though, that his abilities had come from the trauma he'd received from a particularly life-threatening spider-venom.

"Are you sure?" The woman - Peter finally looks at her name tag, it reads Susan Jones, (Peter distinctly gets a flashback from ned telling him you should never trust somebody with two first names) - hums. He nods, more confidently than he was when he spoke. She's leaning into him, trying to find any sign of deceit in his eyes. Peter truly notices how she makes him feel, and why he instinctively squirms when she's looking at him. It almost makes him feel physically ill to be near her - something's just so off about her.

She reminds him of a character he'd read in a Harry Potter book once. What was her name…? It dawns on him after a few excruciatingly long seconds. Dolores Umbridge! That was the name. Once she's certain she doesn't find any lies, she rummages through the tray table, opening a drawer and pulling out a small white bottle of - assuming by it's rattle - pills.

"You know what these are? It's called medicine, used to treat sick people. Kid's like you - born with the X-Gene, are born sick, ill. Since you haven't shown any signs of mutation, besides the gene, these are going to suppress the gene before it has time to activate. Almost a cure, although, not quite. If you even a single day from taking the pill - the suppressed gene might want to spontaneously activate. You understand, right?" Peter nods for what seems like the hundredth time. He finds it in himself to speak up.

"You know I'm not a _fucking_ baby, right? You can speak to me normally." He didn't mean it to come out so harsh, but it did and he doesn't regret it, even when he sees the look of horror that passes her face. Her sweet face turns into an ugly scowl. She opens a folder full of Peter's records and flips through some of the pages.

"I know your kind, you think you foreigners are entitled to live here just because it's a free country. Well, get this, America doesn't owe you shit. Go back to your own country, freak." Peter's about to mention the fact that a large demographic of Americans, especially in New York, have some kind of Italian ancestry in them. He wasn't even born in Italy, and had never been there in his life.

Peter scrunches up his nose.

"You know," She begins to add. "I heard your close to Mr Stark, haven't you ever heard what his father thought of mutants? He's going to drop you the second he finds out." Peter freezes, and something in his stomach drops. He hadn't thought of that, and he'd never really gotten what Tony's opinion on mutants.

But Tony wouldn't abandon him for that, would he? Peter's got nobody left and nowhere to go without Tony.


	19. Chapter 19

"Why do you want to go back?" Hank levels Connor with a stare. "There's literally nothing back there to make you want to go back. They probably would have realised by now that you're gone and already would have replaced you with an RK800 identical to yourself."

Connor bows his head down, thinking carefully. It's true, now that he thinks about it, Hank didn't really have any personal connections left for him back there, and Connor was just as easily replaceable. The effort doesn't really amount when the pay off is returning to a shitty world where Androids, his very own kind, are treated like second class citizens.

Maybe it's the guilt factor in him playing up, the nagging reminder that he really isn't a person - far from it actually. He's just labelled as property. To be broken at a whim and to be sold on every other street corner. He's just merchandise, that somebody has made to fulfil a purpose. He has a purpose, and to give that up simply because he doesn't like it or agree with it would be to give up on the very reason he was created in the first place.

It wasn't fair, but really what was the moral grounding here? While everything Hank suggested was one hundred per cent true, without a doubt, Connor felt (?) strongly about the topic. It was a sore spot in him, an error in his programming. He didn't want to follow orders, but he also didn't want to be pointless. Following orders was his point, so if he didn't have that, he didn't have anything.

In this universe, even down to his very mortality, he was on the same level as everybody else. If he died, Connor knew that he wouldn't be coming back, not in this form, unless extreme repairs were made by a Cyberlife professional, which this universe severely lacked. There was no local Cyberlife cloud to upload his saved data. Everything that made him, him. Everything that separates himself from the countless other identical RK800's could be lost, just as easily as anybody else could lose their life.

The thought filled him with warmth. Here he was just like anybody else, and here, people didn't treat him like he was expendable or replaceable.

"I…" He begins, hesitating with his words, an unusual act for him. Hank notices this and softly encourages him.

"You..?" Hank is being surprisingly patient with him, given his background with Androids and other people in his life.

"I don't really want to go back," Connor admits. It's alarming, to say the least, that he's finally said something to secure him in the category of deviant, the very thing he's been programmed to track down, fight and help prevent from occurring.

Connor now lacked a clear purpose.

—

In an office in a S.H.I.E.L.D. sanctioned building, an old woman writes out a prescription for one Peter Benjamin Parker, while aggressively shoving a small bottle of pills at him. On the label, it reads 'Pre-mutation X-Gene Suppressants'. Peter huffs as she scrambles out of the room. Director Fury is sat behind a desk on the other side of the room, quietly spectating.

"What was that about?" Peter bites out. Fury raises a perfectly arched eyebrow.

"One Thaddeus Ross wanted all aspects of every vigilante documented down on a register. That just then? Wasn't up to me. I can't control what the council wants, and I know jackshit about their motives most of the time, but what I do know is that they probably just want this as step one into controlling the Avengers."

Peter rolls his eyes but doesn't argue when Fury passes him a pile of stapled documents for him to fill in, some of which included multiple choice questions. 'What the actual Fuck?' Peter thinks when faced with the fourth question. It's a 'number in order of importance' one asking him to state whom he'd consider was his closest friend, with three names as options. 'Ned Leeds, Michelle Jones, Mary-Jane Watson, Gwen Stacey and Connor Anderson'. A) Gwen Stacey happened to be dead and B) How the hell did they have all this down on paper like that?

After getting over his initial shock, Peter answered the rest of the questions and made his way out of there. The moment he steps out of the front door of the building, he breaks into a sprint. Making his way to Stark Tower, not stopping until he got there. He locks himself up in his room, throwing the white bottle of pills on his bedside, reminding himself to discard it later, in a place where the contents of the trash aren't recorded by the tower's software.

Knowing now that the government had information that he could now have used against him, including for some reason his favourite Thai food place, was not comforting in any way. Peter was aware of the Spiderman controversy that the press and media had whipped up for him. The daily bugle always calling him a menace, trying to put a gruesome twist to every one of his outings, bringing up the number of people he couldn't save.

Peter knew that there wasn't anything wrong with saving people, but for every person, he couldn't save, made him wonder if maybe he was fast enough - or agile enough, that maybe things would've turned out differently. A great quote he'd once heard that he'd never been able to find who said was "There is always room for improvement."

That's just how it starts though. There's the nasty press exposure which he ignores, and then there are the people closest to him reinforcing him, telling him that he is enough. That's when the doubt is seeded. When people tell him things that he knows he wants to hear is when he begins to really think, _is that true? Or are they just humouring me?_.

It's a difficult market to break into, and he knows that New York demands nothing short of perfection from its local vigilante. If the philosophy that there was always room to improve was true, then Peter knows that he'll never be anywhere near perfect enough for New York.

—

"Peter," Tony begins the next day at the breakfast bar, catching Peter scull down a pint of orange juice in a few seconds, while shovelling dry toast down his throat. It's unusual, as this early in the morning Tony's either in his lab or having his daily sleep in until one in the afternoon. His tone sobers the mood completely, and catches Peter completely off guard.

Peter sets down his empty glass, and puts down the rest of the toast.

"Yes?" He responds, giving his complete attention in. Tony puts a document on the breakfast bar, in the space between them. Peter looks through it. He can hardly understand anything in it. In through the door walks a man dressed in a suit, wearing round sunglasses. When he takes a seat on one of the stools at the breakfast bar that Peter realises he puts down a cane by himself. He's blind.

"It means, that somebody is proposing to take custody/adopt you. Tony's never formally adopted you and you've just been in his custody as a temporary foster situation, which would typically last until you turn 18." Peter scrunches up his face. Who'd be interested in adopting him anyways? When he looks further into the signed documents he reads the words name 'Norman Osborn' signed at the end of the page.

The blind man, holds out his hand and introduces himself.

"I'm a lawyer, Matthew Murdock." Peter gently takes the hand in his own, shaking it. "In the case that you don't want to be placed in the care of Norman Osborn with a legitimate reason that can be recognised in court, I'm here to make an argument on behalf of Mr. Stark to keep you in his custody. If you consent to Mr Osborn having custody of you though, then everything is agreed and I'm required. Custody transition should be pretty simple and standard."

Peter nods slowly, as if he were a child and understanding Matthews simple terminology was extremely difficult for him. Tony takes out a file with a few other sheets in it. He hands it over to Peter.

"You have until the end of the week to turn these into the court, if no preference of custody is shown, then a custody battle will occur. Since you were only under my custody via foster care, you're technically open for adoption." Tony slowly leaves the room, not before stealing a piece of toast off of Peter's tower of bread.

Peter flicks through the new documents. They had already been prepared with Norman Osborn's and Tony's signature in all the required spots. Even most of his own details had been filled out for him beforehand. They only blank space was the line at the bottom of the last page for own signature. It'd almost seem like Tony was setting up all the proper documents in favour of Norman Osborn adopting him.

But Tony didn't want him gone, did he? The more he thought about it, the more it made sense to him in his mind. All he had caused for Tony was pain and grief. All he had done was waste his time, money and resources. And what had he given back? Absolutely nothing. Peter can't recall a single thing that he had done for Tony. That's when it hit him. He was probably like a parasite in Tony's eyes. Taking more than he gave up.

What an extremely selfish teen he must be? Who in their right mind even wants to work with teens in the first place. They were moody, hard to work with and downright uncooperative in most situations. Norman Osborn on the other hand, clearly he had experience in the subject matter, already having a probably moody and uncooperative teen of his own, Harry.

Now that he thinks back on it properly, and delves into his memories, Peter remembers Harry as nothing but delightful in his childhood. He had been one of the only kids in his childhood class to approach him and form a, what would seem like a lifelong lasting friendship if it hadn't been for Harry moving to a different preppy school half way through primary school.

Peter delicately places the bundle of documents and folders in his bag, flat against his laptop. He'd sign them later. If that was how Tony wanted to do things, then he'd play along. He didn't need Tony, and by the way, the papers had been pre-signed, then clearly Tony didn't want him here either.

Maybe he'd been alerted that Peter was a carrier of the X-Gene and had decided to drop him there and then. That was fine. Whatever. It was Tony's choice, and Peter honestly couldn't really blame him for wanting to drop him. Everybody else who had been rather close to him ended up with a less than favourable fate. Aunt May, Uncle Ben, his parents. The list went on, even extending to those who weren't related to him, such as his long-time crush Gwen Stacy.

Maybe all this was for the best.

—

After school that day Peter showed up at the local government administration office and turned in the papers himself. He'd also gone out of his way to drop by the stark tower administrative offices to register his two-week notice for his resignation from his position as an intern. He supposed it would be a little bit awkward between Mr Stark and himself if they were to continue to work together. Peter had made up his mind. It'd probably be better to become an independent vigilante rather than be in cahoots with the avengers, regarding the controversy around Spiderman as a vigilante, he'd basically just be bad press for the Avengers if he were to stay.

He doesn't really feel anything when writing out his resignation, nothing except for regrets that he didn't do it sooner. It was rather childish of him to believe that he could've stayed with Mr Stark for the rest of his life. He should've seen it sooner. Mr Stark taking custody of him was at the most temporal.

He stays that night at Ned's, whom had somehow gotten into contact with Connor and asked him also to stay over. The three of them watched movies late into the night, and when the last movie of the original star wars trilogy had ended, they stared at the blank screen in silence. Peter hadn't really been feeling the mood that night, or really concentrating on the movies in general.

Rather than having a great time with Ned and Connor, he'd been reflecting of the events that had transpired through the past few months. Everything he had ever known had been torn away from him, and not much good things had come out of the situation to compensate for his losses.

It was quite possibly that this offer to be taken in by Norman Osborn was the silver lining that he was looking for. Although his motives were unknown, Peter had a good feeling about it.

There's a buzzing in his back pocket, Peter carefully removes his phone to see that it's Mr Stark trying to reach him, not really feeling it, Peter declines the call. He doesn't really want to talk to Mr Stark right now, not after what had just transpired that morning. He's not exactly sure, but sometimes the things you weren't so sure about turned out to be the best possible ending to things. If he cut all ties to Mr Stark, he could start anew.

He didn't want to put Mr Stark through what Peter knew was an inevitable future. He could see it now, if he stayed there'd be nothing but bad press, as more and more evidence was pushing that Spiderman was closely knit with the Avengers, and what would the point be in delaying the heartbreak of leaving?

There was no doubt in his mind, this was absolutely necessary both for his own wellbeing and Tony's wellbeing. He hoped that there wouldn't be any hard feelings from Tony, and also hoped that he'd understand.

—

 _Dear Tony,_

 _It is in both of our best interests that I just disappear from your own life and the Avengers._

 _I was never an Avenger to begin with._

 _Please, don't contact me unless there is an emergency._

 _I hope you understand,_

 _Best wishes, with love from,_

 _Peter Benjamin Parker._

 _—_

No, Tony wasn't crying, you were.

Why did this have to be the first time that Peter called him Tony?


End file.
